These days, I always carry with me a bag of M&Ms. This is what it looks like:
I have been using M&Ms to promote good behavior around me. The idea is that if I start rewarding myself as well as people/agents around me based on their behavior, following the theory of reinforcement learning, it will slowly nudge myself as well as others towards doing good things.
For example, If I do something good, like go to the gym or wake up early or actually read a paper or finish some item in my TODO list, I give myself a single M&M. Given my sweet-tooth, this conditions me towards pursuing good behavior. I started following this protocol February 1st. Just look at my progress through the month of February in this diagram. Each candy dispensed is a task successfully completed.
Likewise, if someone holds a door open for me, or tells me a funny joke, or makes an astute observation, I immediately reward them with an M&M. If it is not possible to give them a candy, for example a cyclist passing by, I yell out my appreciation: “Thank you! I am proud of you! Everyone should be proud of you!”
Similarly, I dispense negative rewards whenever someone does something bad or stupid. If someone, for example blocks my way up an escalator or starts yapping about LLMs or how excited they are about the new season of White Lotus, I tell them something mean: “That color does not look good on you” or “Our ancestors would have never invented language if they knew it would lead to you uttering this nonsense.” The hope is that, over time, this minimizes suboptimal behavior around me.
Finally, I encourage you all, my readers, to adopt a similar system in your lives. The biggest issue with the world right now is that we don’t have such immediate feedback loops everywhere. We would reach convergence to good behavior much quicker if everybody participated.
[NOTE: A lot of you are emailing me about someone named Pavlov. Sorry, I have never met him.]