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On Having Enough Socks · Gwern.net

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Personal experience and surveys on running out of socks; discussion of socks as small example of human procrastination and irrationality, caused by lack of explicit deliberative thought where no natural triggers or habits exist. After run­ning out of socks one day, I re­flected on how or­di­nary tasks get ne­glected. Anec­do­tally and in 3 on­line sur­veys, peo­ple re­port often not hav­ing enough socks, a prob­lem which cor­re­lates with rar­ity of sock pur­chases and de­mo­graphic vari­ables, con­sis­tent with a ne­glect/pro­cras­ti­na­tion in­ter­pre­ta­tion: be­cause there is no spe­cific time or trig­ger­ing fac­tor to re­plen­ish a shrink­ing sock stock­pile, it is easy to run out. This re­minds me of akra­sia⁠ on minor tasks, ‘yak shav­ing’, and the na­ture of dis­as­ter in com­plex sys­tems: lack of hard rules lets er­rors ac­cu­mu­late, with­out any ‘global’ un­der­stand­ing of the drift into dis­as­ter (or at least in­ef­fi­ciency). Hu­mans on a smaller scale also ‘drift’ whe

--- title: On Having Enough Socks description: Personal experience and surveys on running out of socks; discussion of socks as small example of human procrastination and irrationality, caused by lack of explicit deliberative thought where no natural triggers or habits exist. created: 2017-11-22 modified: 2019-06-12 thumbnail: /doc/economics/1993-11-18-thesimpsons-s5e8-boyscoutznthehood-homersimpson-moneycanbeexchangedforgoodsandservices.jpg thumbnail-text: ' Homer : “Aw, $20? I wanted a peanut!” Homer’s Brain : “$20 can buy many peanuts.” Homer : “Explain how!” Homer’s Brain : “Money can be ex

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