can i make lots of folds sorta at random (with overpairs postflop for example) and show improvement if calling too much is my biggest weakness? i know there are better ways to learn how to call less, but i think my instinct is way off and i'd be better closing my eyes and folding.

Learn pot equity and pot odds

legionrainfall, you have made it painfully clear that you are a losing (horribly losing) player of poker.

Perhaps your best strategy in the short term within other people's threads..... would be to READ much more than you post.

But he has chutzpah, which is 75% of winning at poker.

Fwiw, I've simplified the dilemma in the OP. I'm now using a 1/3 RNG to call a second bet, and will use the same randomizer on the river. 8 out of 9 times I won't be calling the third bet when I was prone to before. I am officially a fish

I'm kinda reluctant to reply here, since I feel this is not a beginner's question, at least in your case.

I wouldn't do it randomly.

Just put in the work!
You know you're calling too often, find the spots where you're calling too often and focus on finding those folds!
Work on it, keep focused, you'll improve.

How is randomly folding going to make you better?

This is one of the things that really comes from knowing your own range and how your range should play. I'm a massive, massive station myself, but an idealised thought process I've designed looks something like this:

1) if I'm thinking 'what the **** is going on here?' or have forgotten what's happened in the hand (I think you're a live player so the latter is probably less likely?), I look at the size of the pot and use that to estimate how much money I should be putting in the pot, erring on the side of less if there's doubt. In the former situation I mark the hand to run a sim later to identify if villain is getting way OOL or if it's something I hadn't considered to be aware of (assuming villain is a reg, I don't bother simming vs fish).
2) I identify roughly what my range is (distribution of pairs/high card/stronger hands etc), and consider whether the 1 pair hands in particular (as that's normally where the call/fold threshold lies in NL) tend to have any particular characteristics (are they pocket pairs? what are their second cards, given my PF range?)
3) I identify villain's vbet and bluff ranges look like, and whether there are any cards which are useful as blockers to one but not the other
4) generally, if a hand beats a single vbet combo it's at least a pure call, and if it loses to a single bluff combo it's never a call
5) I then take the remaining combos and identify roughly which hands are best based on blockers to fill my 1-a frequency. If there is a big grouping of hands which takes me from below to above 1-a, I randomise using an RNG for all hands within that grouping.

Obv this is very very impractical to go through every hand and it applies to river spots only, but it's a really useful way to study. In practice I just say '**** you you're bluffing' and lose money.

Open up an NL10 table or whatever and play your standard preflop game but fold everything post-flop for an hour - overpairs, sets, everything. Rinse and repeat until you couldn't give less f's about mucking a hand.

Thanks for that, very interesting!

I have a way of learning through madness. If I start printing there will be a reason and I'd expect to figure stuff out (adjust my strategy) along the way.

What makes you think that calling too much is a big weakness of yours?

Maybe that's the issue? You're never going to win by folding (just lose less) so your madness doesn't register it as a good play?

Have you thought about betting/raising instead of calling?

I find betting/raising as a strategy in general is better than a calling strategy. At least you get the opportunity to make your opponent make a mistake by folding the best hand and when you have the best hand they either fold or call and you print. Like if your thinking you have the best hand and are calling bets you should be betting instead. It also stops opponents knowing what you have when they fold as well. Try and give less info to your foes so you can pay for the hoes with the dough you earnt from joe.