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Discussion: Eating Candy

From the Fallible Ideas Discord chatroom:

[1:58 PM] anonymous: i wanna eat but i’m not hungry what should i do?
[1:59 PM] anonymous: what should i do to not want to eat**
[2:01 PM] filthy_inductivist: are you bored?
[2:02 PM] anonymous: no, i’m playing a game and having fun
[2:03 PM] curi: why do you want to eat?
[2:03 PM] anonymous: idk
[2:07 PM] curi: do you want to eat any food or a specific food?
[2:07 PM] anonymous: candy
[2:07 PM] anonymous: cuz it tastes good
[2:08 PM] curi: when you are hungry, do you eat mostly candy or do you eat other things? maybe you should eat less non-candy.
[2:09 PM] anonymous: other things
[2:09 PM] curi: i suggest you make 50% of every meal candy until you don't feel like eating that much candy any more.
[2:09 PM] anonymous: wuhh?
[2:09 PM] curi: just have little portions of the other stuff
[2:09 PM] anonymous: how would that help xD
[2:09 PM] curi: and eat the candy you want
[2:10 PM] curi: you will get tired of candy after a while and not want so much
[2:10 PM] curi: or if you don't, that's ok, you should eat what you want.
[2:10 PM] anonymous: ohh
[2:11 PM] anonymous: ok i’ll try dat for a few days

I think this chat is a good example of a production discussion. It's short and to the point. I didn't need many questions to find out what was going on. I gave actionable advice that I think will actually be useful and used. I made the advice simple enough to be understood, and I also gave a brief explanation of the reasoning. And anonymous did a great job of giving short, clear, direct answers to my questions, which was really helpful. Trying it for a few days is a good idea too – it's worth a try but if they already thought it was a great idea, rather than just something to try, that would be suspicious that they were overestimating how well they understood it.

If none of your discussions look like this, that's a sign something is going wrong. Some can be longer and involve more misunderstandings, but some should be short and successful.


Elliot Temple on December 4, 2018

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