I was thinking of posting a reply to this like “Hey, this is all very interesting, but you have no evidence whatsoever for it.” Decided against it, because it’s not being presented as a proven theory. It’s being presented as an interesting and elegant possibility that deserves further discussion, or a fertile direction for future research. That puts it on the same footing as eg superstrings, and sometimes one of those sorts of things is the creative seed someone else needs.
No one’s going to discover a simple cure-all that works for everyone, but I’ve already [gotten something really useful to me] partly out of our discussions here, and the comments there make it look like some other people have done the same.
Even if we don’t expect any further direct benefits, it might end up kind of like the moonshot, which wasn’t too useful in itself but which more than made back its cost in generating peripheral technology. The akrasia discussion has led to some really good peripheral posts like Utilons vs. Hedons, which clarified a lot for me, and some very introductory discussion of PCT, which pjeby thinks explains everything about everything. The comments in my Preferences thread are making me think harder about the differences between the conscious and unconscious than I’ve ever done before.
And it’s not like this is costing us anything. There aren’t many posts on LW as it is, you can ignore any you don’t like, and the limiting resource on working more on “harder” questions is less time and attention than it is intelligence and inspiration.
PCT, which pjeby thinks explains everything about everything
Not at all. It merely fills a lot of gaps and simplifies things in the model of mind that I already had. But my overall model still contains things that I consider to be lacking in the explanation department, and which PCT doesn’t really touch. PCT has become a central metaphor in my model, but it’s quite far from the entirety of my model.
For example, PCT has little to directly say about status, self-esteem, and the like, except insofar as it implies these are controlled perceptual variables like any other. (That is, that we have ranges for them that we’re comfortable with, outside of which we take action to restore them to that range.) PCT also doesn’t make much distinction between controlled “avoidance” variables (e.g “amount of pain”) and controlled “approach” variables (e.g. “amount of pleasure”), and I find those to be rather important practical distinctions.
In addition, one of the first mindhacking techniques I usually teach to people (dubbed “feeling elimination”) has no obvious connection to PCT, nor really a very good explanation at all. I know that it works, and many of the parameters that make it work or not work in a given instance, but as to how it really works, I know very little.
However, despite these inadequacies, PCT actually doesn’t have any competition as a generalized reductionist model of behavior. Not since Skinner has anybody in the field of psychology even tried to make such a generalized model, AFAIK, let alone succeeded half as well as PCT.
I was thinking of posting a reply to this like “Hey, this is all very interesting, but you have no evidence whatsoever for it.” Decided against it, because it’s not being presented as a proven theory. It’s being presented as an interesting and elegant possibility that deserves further discussion, or a fertile direction for future research. That puts it on the same footing as eg superstrings, and sometimes one of those sorts of things is the creative seed someone else needs.
No one’s going to discover a simple cure-all that works for everyone, but I’ve already [gotten something really useful to me] partly out of our discussions here, and the comments there make it look like some other people have done the same.
Even if we don’t expect any further direct benefits, it might end up kind of like the moonshot, which wasn’t too useful in itself but which more than made back its cost in generating peripheral technology. The akrasia discussion has led to some really good peripheral posts like Utilons vs. Hedons, which clarified a lot for me, and some very introductory discussion of PCT, which pjeby thinks explains everything about everything. The comments in my Preferences thread are making me think harder about the differences between the conscious and unconscious than I’ve ever done before.
And it’s not like this is costing us anything. There aren’t many posts on LW as it is, you can ignore any you don’t like, and the limiting resource on working more on “harder” questions is less time and attention than it is intelligence and inspiration.
Not at all. It merely fills a lot of gaps and simplifies things in the model of mind that I already had. But my overall model still contains things that I consider to be lacking in the explanation department, and which PCT doesn’t really touch. PCT has become a central metaphor in my model, but it’s quite far from the entirety of my model.
For example, PCT has little to directly say about status, self-esteem, and the like, except insofar as it implies these are controlled perceptual variables like any other. (That is, that we have ranges for them that we’re comfortable with, outside of which we take action to restore them to that range.) PCT also doesn’t make much distinction between controlled “avoidance” variables (e.g “amount of pain”) and controlled “approach” variables (e.g. “amount of pleasure”), and I find those to be rather important practical distinctions.
In addition, one of the first mindhacking techniques I usually teach to people (dubbed “feeling elimination”) has no obvious connection to PCT, nor really a very good explanation at all. I know that it works, and many of the parameters that make it work or not work in a given instance, but as to how it really works, I know very little.
However, despite these inadequacies, PCT actually doesn’t have any competition as a generalized reductionist model of behavior. Not since Skinner has anybody in the field of psychology even tried to make such a generalized model, AFAIK, let alone succeeded half as well as PCT.