Furthermore, it seems to me like things like F@H are rather unlikely to cause a “good deed of the day” effect for very long: by their nature, they’re continuing processes that rather quickly fade into the background of your consciousness and you partially forget about. If F@H automatically starts up whenever you boot your computer, then having it running wouldn’t count for a day’s good deed for most people. Constantly seeing the icon might boost a cached self effect of “I should do useful things”, though.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1d9/doing_your_good_deed_for_the_day/
But on the other hand http://lesswrong.com/lw/4e/cached_selves/ ; it doesn’t seem clear to me which effect dominates, so we should be careful about drawing inferences based on that.
Furthermore, it seems to me like things like F@H are rather unlikely to cause a “good deed of the day” effect for very long: by their nature, they’re continuing processes that rather quickly fade into the background of your consciousness and you partially forget about. If F@H automatically starts up whenever you boot your computer, then having it running wouldn’t count for a day’s good deed for most people. Constantly seeing the icon might boost a cached self effect of “I should do useful things”, though.