Here we get into rather muddy water, but to be brief, although other people may be so lucky as to not need a workaround to do something, remember that individual brains in humans are not the same thing as the statistical regularity that we call a human brain. While some individual may not have a particular psychological trait, other people do, and overall we can assess whether a particular trait is common to most people (there will always be exceptions due to random variation). Further, although some person may have a brain that makes it easy to achieve some goal, this doesn’t mean that every person has a brain that can be tuned to function in the same way.
You would be right if the human brain were a computer produced by a nice, low-noise process, but it’s not. Evolution contains a lot of noise, and the brain works because it’s designed to function even when several of its systems don’t work exactly the way an engineer might have liked them to. When I say that we are broken and unfixable, I mean that each individual brain has systems that, based on centuries of attempts to change them through mere thinking, cannot be fixed without the medical technology to physical restructure brain systems.
Here we get into rather muddy water, but to be brief, although other people may be so lucky as to not need a workaround to do something, remember that individual brains in humans are not the same thing as the statistical regularity that we call a human brain. While some individual may not have a particular psychological trait, other people do, and overall we can assess whether a particular trait is common to most people (there will always be exceptions due to random variation). Further, although some person may have a brain that makes it easy to achieve some goal, this doesn’t mean that every person has a brain that can be tuned to function in the same way.
Are you claiming, then, to have been born without the ability to achieve any goal? If so, the fact that you managed to post this comment would appear to falsify that claim.
Also, you seem to be using all the power of your intelligence to defend the position that you are helpless; this seems like a poor use of that intelligence. As Eliezer says, the problem with selective application of arguments is that the smarter you get, the stupider you become.
It might be more useful for you to look at how you successfully achieve certain goals, so you can find out what you’re doing differently in those contexts.
Are you claiming, then, to have been born without the ability to achieve any goal?
It looks to me as if pjeby and gworley are miscommunicating somehow, and this looks like where the miscommunication started. gworley, as I understand him/her, is saying not “we can’t do anything” but “there are lots of things we can’t do, even though it seems like we ought to be able to”; different things for different people.
It is true that for every achievable (i.e., achievable-by-someone) goal you have and aren’t achieving, there are other people who are achieving it or have done so. I don’t know how you think you know that those people are doing it without a workaround (not least because I don’t know exactly what you consider a “workaround”). But, in any case: it doesn’t follow that every achievable-by-someone goal you have is achievable by you, with or without workarounds. I might have the goal of running a mile in less than four minutes, or proving a mathematical theorem important enough to make me famous, or becoming President of the United States. Other people have achieved those goals. But it’s at least possible that they are out of my reach.
I might have the goal of running a mile in less than four minutes, or proving a mathematical theorem important enough to make me famous, or becoming President of the United States. Other people have achieved those goals. But it’s at least possible that they are out of my reach.
But it is not out of your reach to train to run a four minute mile, or to campaign to be the President. It is this type of behavioral goal that is under discussion; we are not talking about generalized goal-reaching ability, but establishing desired habits.
My points are that:
all of us have successfully established other habits besides the ones under discussion, without using workarounds of the type I mentioned earlier in this thread, and
beginning from a presupposition that we lack control over our behavior, irrationally limits the number of options available for a solution.
I’d go further to say that I expect most adults have had the experience of making at least one “life-changing decision” that they then executed without further external support. Actually, no, scratch that… Most people in my experience have made lots of “never again” or “always” decisions by the time they grow up, that they’ve flawlessly executed, without needing to think about it. (It’s just that many if not most of those decisions will have been really bad.)
So what I’m saying is, if you want to make some type of behavioral change, it’s more helpful to begin with the presupposition that at some point in your life you have changed at least one thing by fiat before, and then try to repeat that process. And if that doesn’t work out, to assume you’ve changed at least one thing by willpower, and apply those lessons, etc.
There has to be something you’ve done that’s worked well, IOW.
So, it’s established that human capabilities vary greatly: some people can run faster, or prove harder theorems, than others. It would therefore not be surprising if the same were true for behavioral goals, given how difficult they can (1) feel and (2) be, as measured by how many people achieve them. In fact, I think it’s obvious that there are such differences; consider, e.g., the goal “get up every morning at 6am”, and the well-established fact that there are substantial and stable differences in people’s circadian rhythms.
If all you’re arguing is that most people are somewhat capable of achieving some behavioral goals, I have no disagreement with that; nor do I see anything in what gworley has written to suggest that s/he does.
And, since (as you point out) all of us frequently achieve behavioral goals, no one is suggesting that workarounds like the ones discussed here should be, or are likely to be, applied to all such goals. Only to the ones that feel really difficult, or that people have tried and failed to achieve before—by fiat, willpower, whatever. And for those goals, the belief “I can’t control my behavior in this way without hacks” is not a “presupposition”. (It might none the less be a mistake, of course.)
And for those goals, the belief “I can’t control my behavior in this way without hacks” is not a “presupposition”. (It might none the less be a mistake, of course.)
It’s a presupposition if you’re assuming it’s true, without having tested it.
And it’s a dangerous presupposition because it rules out options that lead to an increased sense of control—and sense of control over one’s life is consistently shown to be a VERY important psychological variable for happiness, peace of mind, and motivation.
Self-fulfilling prophecies, again: presupposing lack of control leads to reduced sense of control leads to less actual control, and down the spiral goes. Presupposing greater control—or the ability to learn control—leads to increased sense of control leads to more actual control, and up the spiral goes.
This isn’t about facts, IOW, it’s about frames. I used to make the sort of arguments gworley is making, about nearly everything in my life. My wife and I would talk about trying to arrange the furniture in such a way as to thwart our tendencies to pile stuff up in high-traffic areas… instead of learning to just pick shit up.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to make things work more easily, instead of cultivating the ability to do difficult things. The problem is that it’s effectively sending a subliminal message to yourself that you can’t handle anything difficult. I was making myself weaker and weaker, when I could’ve been getting stronger.
That is my point: that the specific arguments gworley is using, even if “true”, are not useful. I was trying to point out that there are other true things that are more useful to put into your brain, if you want it to produce good results.
This is one of those glass half empty/half full things; from a purely logical perspective there’s no difference, but emotionally—and therefore behaviorally—there is.
My wife and I would talk about trying to arrange the furniture in such a way as to thwart our tendencies to pile stuff up in high-traffic areas… instead of learning to just pick shit up.
Cool! OOC—what strategies/heuristics did you implement to learn this ability?
It might be more useful for you to look at how you successfully achieve certain goals, so you can find out what you’re doing differently in those contexts.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing here. We’re not helpless, just helpless to change certain things in certain ways.
Of course not. I do things all the time without the reward existing outside myself. I eat because I’m hungry, and to my mind, although I can imagine all kinds of things that benefit from my not being hungry, I think it’s safe to say that I eat primarily because I don’t want to be hungry (I assume the brain’s goal system is this shallow when it comes to hunger, though it may be deeper and I just don’t know it).
Here we get into rather muddy water, but to be brief, although other people may be so lucky as to not need a workaround to do something, remember that individual brains in humans are not the same thing as the statistical regularity that we call a human brain. While some individual may not have a particular psychological trait, other people do, and overall we can assess whether a particular trait is common to most people (there will always be exceptions due to random variation). Further, although some person may have a brain that makes it easy to achieve some goal, this doesn’t mean that every person has a brain that can be tuned to function in the same way.
You would be right if the human brain were a computer produced by a nice, low-noise process, but it’s not. Evolution contains a lot of noise, and the brain works because it’s designed to function even when several of its systems don’t work exactly the way an engineer might have liked them to. When I say that we are broken and unfixable, I mean that each individual brain has systems that, based on centuries of attempts to change them through mere thinking, cannot be fixed without the medical technology to physical restructure brain systems.
Are you claiming, then, to have been born without the ability to achieve any goal? If so, the fact that you managed to post this comment would appear to falsify that claim.
Also, you seem to be using all the power of your intelligence to defend the position that you are helpless; this seems like a poor use of that intelligence. As Eliezer says, the problem with selective application of arguments is that the smarter you get, the stupider you become.
It might be more useful for you to look at how you successfully achieve certain goals, so you can find out what you’re doing differently in those contexts.
It looks to me as if pjeby and gworley are miscommunicating somehow, and this looks like where the miscommunication started. gworley, as I understand him/her, is saying not “we can’t do anything” but “there are lots of things we can’t do, even though it seems like we ought to be able to”; different things for different people.
It is true that for every achievable (i.e., achievable-by-someone) goal you have and aren’t achieving, there are other people who are achieving it or have done so. I don’t know how you think you know that those people are doing it without a workaround (not least because I don’t know exactly what you consider a “workaround”). But, in any case: it doesn’t follow that every achievable-by-someone goal you have is achievable by you, with or without workarounds. I might have the goal of running a mile in less than four minutes, or proving a mathematical theorem important enough to make me famous, or becoming President of the United States. Other people have achieved those goals. But it’s at least possible that they are out of my reach.
But it is not out of your reach to train to run a four minute mile, or to campaign to be the President. It is this type of behavioral goal that is under discussion; we are not talking about generalized goal-reaching ability, but establishing desired habits.
My points are that:
all of us have successfully established other habits besides the ones under discussion, without using workarounds of the type I mentioned earlier in this thread, and
beginning from a presupposition that we lack control over our behavior, irrationally limits the number of options available for a solution.
I’d go further to say that I expect most adults have had the experience of making at least one “life-changing decision” that they then executed without further external support. Actually, no, scratch that… Most people in my experience have made lots of “never again” or “always” decisions by the time they grow up, that they’ve flawlessly executed, without needing to think about it. (It’s just that many if not most of those decisions will have been really bad.)
So what I’m saying is, if you want to make some type of behavioral change, it’s more helpful to begin with the presupposition that at some point in your life you have changed at least one thing by fiat before, and then try to repeat that process. And if that doesn’t work out, to assume you’ve changed at least one thing by willpower, and apply those lessons, etc.
There has to be something you’ve done that’s worked well, IOW.
So, it’s established that human capabilities vary greatly: some people can run faster, or prove harder theorems, than others. It would therefore not be surprising if the same were true for behavioral goals, given how difficult they can (1) feel and (2) be, as measured by how many people achieve them. In fact, I think it’s obvious that there are such differences; consider, e.g., the goal “get up every morning at 6am”, and the well-established fact that there are substantial and stable differences in people’s circadian rhythms.
If all you’re arguing is that most people are somewhat capable of achieving some behavioral goals, I have no disagreement with that; nor do I see anything in what gworley has written to suggest that s/he does.
And, since (as you point out) all of us frequently achieve behavioral goals, no one is suggesting that workarounds like the ones discussed here should be, or are likely to be, applied to all such goals. Only to the ones that feel really difficult, or that people have tried and failed to achieve before—by fiat, willpower, whatever. And for those goals, the belief “I can’t control my behavior in this way without hacks” is not a “presupposition”. (It might none the less be a mistake, of course.)
It’s a presupposition if you’re assuming it’s true, without having tested it.
And it’s a dangerous presupposition because it rules out options that lead to an increased sense of control—and sense of control over one’s life is consistently shown to be a VERY important psychological variable for happiness, peace of mind, and motivation.
Self-fulfilling prophecies, again: presupposing lack of control leads to reduced sense of control leads to less actual control, and down the spiral goes. Presupposing greater control—or the ability to learn control—leads to increased sense of control leads to more actual control, and up the spiral goes.
This isn’t about facts, IOW, it’s about frames. I used to make the sort of arguments gworley is making, about nearly everything in my life. My wife and I would talk about trying to arrange the furniture in such a way as to thwart our tendencies to pile stuff up in high-traffic areas… instead of learning to just pick shit up.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to make things work more easily, instead of cultivating the ability to do difficult things. The problem is that it’s effectively sending a subliminal message to yourself that you can’t handle anything difficult. I was making myself weaker and weaker, when I could’ve been getting stronger.
That is my point: that the specific arguments gworley is using, even if “true”, are not useful. I was trying to point out that there are other true things that are more useful to put into your brain, if you want it to produce good results.
This is one of those glass half empty/half full things; from a purely logical perspective there’s no difference, but emotionally—and therefore behaviorally—there is.
Cool! OOC—what strategies/heuristics did you implement to learn this ability?
And that’s exactly what we’re doing here. We’re not helpless, just helpless to change certain things in certain ways.
So, you’ve never achieved anything in your life without some kind of external carrot or stick, then? Is that what you’re saying?
Of course not. I do things all the time without the reward existing outside myself. I eat because I’m hungry, and to my mind, although I can imagine all kinds of things that benefit from my not being hungry, I think it’s safe to say that I eat primarily because I don’t want to be hungry (I assume the brain’s goal system is this shallow when it comes to hunger, though it may be deeper and I just don’t know it).