That’s probably fair. I struggled a bit with how to frame this post. In practice I’ve used the “spamming micro-intentions” as training wheels to rapidly get to the point where I just actually pay attention to what my intentions in the moment look like. It seemed like a decent enough arrow-pointing-at-the-moon exercise to get people there.
If this works and people are able to get themselves to do more complex and willpower heavy tasks that they wouldn’t normally be able to do, wouldn’t that be a good thing by default? Or are you worried that it would allow people with poorly aligned incentives to do more damage?
No, I’m worried about people hurting themselves doing this, not others. In general I have a lot of concerns around people forcing themselves to do things—my model is that this amounts to some of their parts subjugating other parts, and I both think this is just bad and leads to visibly bad consequences down the line like burning out.
I’m late to this but I wanted to say that I’m glad to see this concern on LW. I have a tendency to burn out whenever I try to do things in The Most Efficient Way (precisely because my Efficient (TM) parts underestimate how much downtime other parts of me need), and I’ve had to avoid LW sometimes in order to get out of a “must do everything efficiently!” spiral.
(That said, I like this idea and will be trying it out and see if it helps or hurts me.)
ETA: I did not try it out after all; I was too worried about causing burnout.
I’m intrigued but also very uncomfortable, probably because I worry that if this works people will mostly use it to force themselves to do things.
That’s probably fair. I struggled a bit with how to frame this post. In practice I’ve used the “spamming micro-intentions” as training wheels to rapidly get to the point where I just actually pay attention to what my intentions in the moment look like. It seemed like a decent enough arrow-pointing-at-the-moon exercise to get people there.
If this works and people are able to get themselves to do more complex and willpower heavy tasks that they wouldn’t normally be able to do, wouldn’t that be a good thing by default? Or are you worried that it would allow people with poorly aligned incentives to do more damage?
No, I’m worried about people hurting themselves doing this, not others. In general I have a lot of concerns around people forcing themselves to do things—my model is that this amounts to some of their parts subjugating other parts, and I both think this is just bad and leads to visibly bad consequences down the line like burning out.
I’m late to this but I wanted to say that I’m glad to see this concern on LW. I have a tendency to burn out whenever I try to do things in The Most Efficient Way (precisely because my Efficient (TM) parts underestimate how much downtime other parts of me need), and I’ve had to avoid LW sometimes in order to get out of a “must do everything efficiently!” spiral.
(That said, I like this idea and will be trying it out and see if it helps or hurts me.)
ETA: I did not try it out after all; I was too worried about causing burnout.