This is a complicated question for me to answer. It doesn’t really feel like a choice, to me.
Just as importantly, what on earth does this mean in not-metaphorical language?
One aspect is what Unreal said: many people have conversations with themselves like “I want to do work and I don’t want to watch TV, but oh no, I somehow mysteriously find myself watching TV instead of doing work” and when this happens to me I identify as the part of me that wants to watch TV (or rather, the part of me that wants something, which it is trying to get by watching TV), and regard the part of me that wants to do work with suspicion, because mostly those are Moloch’s preferences, not mine. So, for example, I generally don’t feel guilty about indulging the desire to watch TV.
There are other aspects but I don’t think I can explain them well. You’re asking questions that get to the core of my being in some sense and that’s just not a short conversation.
I can’t tell if you’re intending this as a counterargument or not, but to the extent that you are, this is pica. Listening to yourself is a skill that needs to be trained.
If you’ve been abusing a small child and then one day finally start listening to what it wants, it might say all sorts of crazy shit, but the response to that is not to continue never listening to children.
I was mostly intending it as something funny in a thread-relevant way. I agree that wanting to (in some sense of “wanting”) sit and watch TV all the time might be a pica-like symptom of some more interesting need, and therefore that “the things we feel urged or compelled to do are often obviously a really bad idea” is not a good argument against listening to one’s feelings of need/compulsion. But I feel I should draw attention to the fact that you really did say “for example, I generally don’t feel guilty about indulging the desire to watch TV” rather than, e.g., ”… about finding something to do that’s more satisfying than working”.
(Feeling guilty is probably counterproductive whether one identifies as the wanna-watch-TV agent or the wanna-get-work-done agent or both or neither; I take it the point of your comment wasn’t really about guilt as such.)
This is a complicated question for me to answer. It doesn’t really feel like a choice, to me.
One aspect is what Unreal said: many people have conversations with themselves like “I want to do work and I don’t want to watch TV, but oh no, I somehow mysteriously find myself watching TV instead of doing work” and when this happens to me I identify as the part of me that wants to watch TV (or rather, the part of me that wants something, which it is trying to get by watching TV), and regard the part of me that wants to do work with suspicion, because mostly those are Moloch’s preferences, not mine. So, for example, I generally don’t feel guilty about indulging the desire to watch TV.
There are other aspects but I don’t think I can explain them well. You’re asking questions that get to the core of my being in some sense and that’s just not a short conversation.
Relevant SMBC comic.
I can’t tell if you’re intending this as a counterargument or not, but to the extent that you are, this is pica. Listening to yourself is a skill that needs to be trained.
If you’ve been abusing a small child and then one day finally start listening to what it wants, it might say all sorts of crazy shit, but the response to that is not to continue never listening to children.
I was mostly intending it as something funny in a thread-relevant way. I agree that wanting to (in some sense of “wanting”) sit and watch TV all the time might be a pica-like symptom of some more interesting need, and therefore that “the things we feel urged or compelled to do are often obviously a really bad idea” is not a good argument against listening to one’s feelings of need/compulsion. But I feel I should draw attention to the fact that you really did say “for example, I generally don’t feel guilty about indulging the desire to watch TV” rather than, e.g., ”… about finding something to do that’s more satisfying than working”.
(Feeling guilty is probably counterproductive whether one identifies as the wanna-watch-TV agent or the wanna-get-work-done agent or both or neither; I take it the point of your comment wasn’t really about guilt as such.)