What you feel is perfectly normal. Humans are not automatically strategic; we use adaptations instead of maximizing values. Think about your brain as a machine built with some heuristics… it works okay on average, in the ancient jungle. Do not overestimate it; it does not have the magical power of doing the right thing. As a rationalist, you should see the limitations of your own mind.
If we want to achieve more, we have to be strategic (or have luck). Find out what realistically motivates you: (1) punishments and rewards, (2) peer pressure. This is your environment. It may support you in your goals, it may actively work against your goals, or it may just move you in a random direction. And you do not have a magical power to overcome that pressure.
All you can do is find a few moments of extraordinary willpower and clearness of mind, and use those moments strategically to (a) steer your life towards a better future, and (b) increase the probability of having these lucid moments in the future. For example, if your environment works against your goals, you may change your environment so it works less against you in the future. Or try to create a habit that would push you in the direction you want to be pushed. If you do it strategically for a longer time, these small changes may add together, and your life may change.
I do recognize making the world a better place a good thing, I just don’t feel much intrinsic motivation to actually do it.
This is what a human brain does when it does not receive social rewards (and possibly receives social punishments) for thinking about making the world a better place.
thinking or being told that I’m “obligated” to do something actually decreases my motivation
I guess in the past “being told you are obligated to something” was probably a good predictor of coming punishment (if you fail to fulfill your obligation). Also “obligation” often means that if you do it successfully, you will not receive a reward because, hey, you merely did your duty. Of course you hate these all-pain-no-gain obligations.
I don’t see myself being able to do something I really don’t enjoy for long enough that it produces meaningful results
That’s how human brain is built. You can’t enjoy something you don’t receive rewards for. The difference between humans is that some of them were trained to give themselves internal rewards for doing some stuff; then they can enjoy doing that stuff even without visible results.
I estimate that I’m more likely to accomplish things with social benefit if I focus on my own needs and wait until I feel inspired to do something for others
...or you could try to create some social reward system. Which is easier said than done, but maybe you could find a group of people with similar goals, tell each other about good stuff you did, and then provide to each other social rewards.
Human brain is designed to work according to some rules. You cannot overcome these rules, but you can try to change your environment so that these rules start working for you instead of against you.
A lot of this is very accurate, and a little depressing since I probably do need a social reward system, or a support network—and I don’t see an easy way to create one right now. :/
I do like having more clarity though, and understanding of what actually is the problem here.
As an example, I want to make a computer game. Programming has an advantage of providing a quick feedback, if you are doing it well. I decide to add a new feature, I write it, then I run the game, and I see the feature is there. I get some reward in form of seeing the new feature that works.
(And “doing it well” in this context means developing the program in small steps, where each step gives you some visible outcome. Small iterations. As opposed to doing some complex step that would take a lot of time while providing you no results until it is completed. Note that “visible outcome” does not necessarily mean something that is displayed on the screen during the normal run of the program. It is something that you as a programmer can see, for example a successful unit test result of a function that usually does not interact with the screen. I suspect that the impact of unit test on programmer’s morale is more important than its impact on the correctness of the code.)
But this is still just a feedback from a computer. There is no social feedback here. So I need another support layer to get that. I have friends who are also computer programmers. So whenever I add some new feature to the program, I send them the program along with the source code by e-mail. I do not expect them to inspect the source code too much; usually just to start the program and click on the new feature I have added. But I know they are programmers, and that the possibility of looking at the source code is there. Also, as programmers they can better understand and appreciate the features I have added. (To a non-programmer often trivial stuff seems very hard, but with the hard stuff they sometimes even don’t understand why that had to be done.) So now my programming has a social dimension, long before the program is finished. And we do it by e-mail (and a Skype talk once in a while, and meeting in person once in a month), so even everyday geographical proximity is not needed. Of course meeting more frequently in person would be even better.
You could try to find this kind of support here. Or anywhere else.
One important detail about this kind of “observer support” is that it works best if it provides you only positive feedback. That is, when you do something and send it, you get a “that’s nice!” reaction, and when you do not anything for a longer time, you only get a gentle reminder. (As opposed to people criticizing you “hey, it was five days and you did nothing, man, wake up” or even criticizing your progress as insufficient “all you did in three days was this lousy green rectangle, this way you will not complete it in thousand years”.) Any progress = good. Any lack of progress = neutral. There is nothing negative. (As a general rule, punishments are way overrated. They usually bring more harm than good, especially in long term.) Sometimes it is difficult to find people who give this kind of feedback; some people are not interested at all, some people are too eager and switch to slavemaster mode.
So, what would you like to have a social reward system for?
What you feel is perfectly normal. Humans are not automatically strategic; we use adaptations instead of maximizing values. Think about your brain as a machine built with some heuristics… it works okay on average, in the ancient jungle. Do not overestimate it; it does not have the magical power of doing the right thing. As a rationalist, you should see the limitations of your own mind.
If we want to achieve more, we have to be strategic (or have luck). Find out what realistically motivates you: (1) punishments and rewards, (2) peer pressure. This is your environment. It may support you in your goals, it may actively work against your goals, or it may just move you in a random direction. And you do not have a magical power to overcome that pressure.
All you can do is find a few moments of extraordinary willpower and clearness of mind, and use those moments strategically to (a) steer your life towards a better future, and (b) increase the probability of having these lucid moments in the future. For example, if your environment works against your goals, you may change your environment so it works less against you in the future. Or try to create a habit that would push you in the direction you want to be pushed. If you do it strategically for a longer time, these small changes may add together, and your life may change.
This is what a human brain does when it does not receive social rewards (and possibly receives social punishments) for thinking about making the world a better place.
I guess in the past “being told you are obligated to something” was probably a good predictor of coming punishment (if you fail to fulfill your obligation). Also “obligation” often means that if you do it successfully, you will not receive a reward because, hey, you merely did your duty. Of course you hate these all-pain-no-gain obligations.
That’s how human brain is built. You can’t enjoy something you don’t receive rewards for. The difference between humans is that some of them were trained to give themselves internal rewards for doing some stuff; then they can enjoy doing that stuff even without visible results.
...or you could try to create some social reward system. Which is easier said than done, but maybe you could find a group of people with similar goals, tell each other about good stuff you did, and then provide to each other social rewards.
Human brain is designed to work according to some rules. You cannot overcome these rules, but you can try to change your environment so that these rules start working for you instead of against you.
I think your analysis is largely correct.
A lot of this is very accurate, and a little depressing since I probably do need a social reward system, or a support network—and I don’t see an easy way to create one right now. :/
I do like having more clarity though, and understanding of what actually is the problem here.
As an example, I want to make a computer game. Programming has an advantage of providing a quick feedback, if you are doing it well. I decide to add a new feature, I write it, then I run the game, and I see the feature is there. I get some reward in form of seeing the new feature that works.
(And “doing it well” in this context means developing the program in small steps, where each step gives you some visible outcome. Small iterations. As opposed to doing some complex step that would take a lot of time while providing you no results until it is completed. Note that “visible outcome” does not necessarily mean something that is displayed on the screen during the normal run of the program. It is something that you as a programmer can see, for example a successful unit test result of a function that usually does not interact with the screen. I suspect that the impact of unit test on programmer’s morale is more important than its impact on the correctness of the code.)
But this is still just a feedback from a computer. There is no social feedback here. So I need another support layer to get that. I have friends who are also computer programmers. So whenever I add some new feature to the program, I send them the program along with the source code by e-mail. I do not expect them to inspect the source code too much; usually just to start the program and click on the new feature I have added. But I know they are programmers, and that the possibility of looking at the source code is there. Also, as programmers they can better understand and appreciate the features I have added. (To a non-programmer often trivial stuff seems very hard, but with the hard stuff they sometimes even don’t understand why that had to be done.) So now my programming has a social dimension, long before the program is finished. And we do it by e-mail (and a Skype talk once in a while, and meeting in person once in a month), so even everyday geographical proximity is not needed. Of course meeting more frequently in person would be even better.
You could try to find this kind of support here. Or anywhere else.
One important detail about this kind of “observer support” is that it works best if it provides you only positive feedback. That is, when you do something and send it, you get a “that’s nice!” reaction, and when you do not anything for a longer time, you only get a gentle reminder. (As opposed to people criticizing you “hey, it was five days and you did nothing, man, wake up” or even criticizing your progress as insufficient “all you did in three days was this lousy green rectangle, this way you will not complete it in thousand years”.) Any progress = good. Any lack of progress = neutral. There is nothing negative. (As a general rule, punishments are way overrated. They usually bring more harm than good, especially in long term.) Sometimes it is difficult to find people who give this kind of feedback; some people are not interested at all, some people are too eager and switch to slavemaster mode.
So, what would you like to have a social reward system for?
That’s interesting. Thank you for a detailed explanation of this.
I can agree a lot with the “only positive/neutral feedback” rule.
I’m not sure, but this got me thinking in a good way. I like this question.