Eby’s theory is that many of us have circuits that try to prevent us from doing the things we want to do.
I don’t think the anthropomorphic frame is helpful, though. It’s like saying that a thermostat is “trying” to prevent the sun from warming up the room as it “wants” to.
It’d be a bit more accurate to simply say that we can have control circuits that require mutually incompatible states or actions.
It seems that evolution combined an explicit goal-driven propositional system with a dumb pattern recognition algorithm for identifying the pattern of “pursuing an unreachable goal”.
PCT has a more general form of this idea that doesn’t require a specialized notion of an unreachable goal: it proposes a reorganization system that responds to chronic or intrinsic error signals by reorganizing the control circuits involved until the error goes away. An unreachable goal would just be one example of what could trigger this system.
PCT considers this “reorganziation” system to be the basis of trial-and-error learning as well, that is, continued failure to reach a goal prompts a series of variations in behavior until the error signal goes away. In the case of an unreachable goal, the reorganization will simply continue until the organism “gives up”—that is, reorganizes the control system so that the current condition is no longer considered an error, and thus experiences no motivation to pursue it.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have any ability to handle unreachable goals specially, just that the PCT model doesn’t need one.
These long-term plans do not immediately return a reward signal, so they trip the “unreachable goal” sensor inside most people’s heads, causing them to completely lose motivation.
This isn’t true. I can get immediate reward signals thinking about my goals over the next year or two. The real issues have more to do with whether your thoughts also trigger any error signals due to predictions of difficulty, stress, having to give up other things, etc. When those things are present, any positive reward is going to get drowned out by shorter-term negatives.
One might ask why on earth evolution designed the power-balance parameter to vary with your mood;
It didn’t, because the model you’re describing here is unnecessarily complicated. Ego depletion is simply a function of conflict between controllers—PCT predicts that two systems in conflict will trigger maximal activation of the neural pathways involved in the conflict, like two competing thermostats simultaneously running the heat and A/C at maximum. And this would naturally expected to result in overuse of brain fuel (e.g. glucose).
Conversely, if someone does badly and then gets criticism for that bad performance, their “unreachable goal” sensor will trip out and remove their will to continue, creating a downward spiral of ever diminishing motivation.
This isn’t really how it works, either. The difference between success and struggling is in one’s interpretation of events, not the events themselves. A successful person responds to negative events with, “Ah! I love a challenge!”, or at worst, “Well, I guess I learned one more way that doesn’t work.”
Conversely, a natural struggler’s interpretation of good things is that they won’t last, aren’t “real”, or “don’t count”.
Dweck’s research into mindsets also shows that it’s ridiculously easy to get people to think in this mindset, even without exposing them to any actual adversity whatsoever! So, it’s not a matter of exposure to adveristy or success; a person who has nothing but success in their early years may spend the rest of their life handicapped by it. (The downward spiral of many child stars being an all-too-obvious example.)
But we should definitely think about developing much more effective ways to defeat that enemy within
You can’t defeat it, and you don’t need to. What you need is to resolve your actual priorities. I’m still integrating the results of PCT into my own work, but the effects have been mindblowing at times.
This weekend, for example, I realized that every time I ever tried to “define my priorities” in the past (as requested by virtually every self-help book in existence), I was actually trying to make a list of what I thought my priorities should be… rather than what they truly were. And just realizing that tiny difference in perspective has completely changed my outlook on planning, and what I’ll be doing in the next few weeks.
The point? While I was trying to do what I thought I “should”, I was essentially ensuring that I would always be in conflict, always fighting this so-called “enemy” within. But by instead doing what I really want in the first place...
Eby’s theory is that many of us have circuits that try to prevent us from doing the things we want to do.
I don’t think the anthropomorphic frame is helpful, though. It’s like saying that a thermostat is “trying” to prevent the sun from warming up the room as it “wants” to.
It’s not the language of “wanting” that seems to be the problem; after all, you yourself talk about “what I really want in the first place”. I think, rather, you’re suggesting Roko amends that quote from “the things we want to do” to “the things we think we want to do” or “the things we think we should want to do”.
If that’s the case, I agree with you; the parts of my mind of which I’m not directly conscious are not something external to me, and fighting them as an “enemy within” has been (in my experience) a recipe for disaster. In particular, I’m often unconsciously aware of many factors that it’s hard to consciously acknowledge at the time; when I’ve felt the strain of forcing a conscious decision against unspecified internal resistance, that decision usually turns out badly for factors I should have seen at the time.
And yet, there is an important counterpoint: I would in fact choose to self-modify into an agent that values utilons more and fuzzies less, were it possible to ask Omega to do that. (Yes, I know, it’s easy to signal that I would do that, but Bayes damn it, I really would.) This limits the types of compromises that I am willing to consider between my various wants.
It’s not the language of “wanting” that seems to be the problem; after all, you yourself talk about “what I really want in the first place”. I think, rather, you’re suggesting Roko amends that quote from “the things we want to do” to “the things we think we want to do” or “the things we think we should want to do”.
Yes, but that wasn’t my main objection. My main objection is that “trying to prevent us from doing the things we want to do” implies an opponent whose goal is to frustrate you, rather than a blind controller simply trying to restore a variable to its programmed range.
It’s not “out to get you” in some fashion, and far too much self-help material creates that kind of paranoia already. Certainly, I don’t want anybody getting the impression that I promote such irrational paranoia myself.
Now it’s my turn to be puzzled about whether we’re disagreeing. Isn’t this quite compatible with what I wrote in the second paragraph?
In any case, IAWYC, but I haven’t yet seen evidence that would lead me to conclude all of my unconscious mental processes are best represented as control circuits of that sort; there could be some relatively sophisticated modeling there as well, just hidden from my conscious ratiocination.
Now it’s my turn to be puzzled about whether we’re disagreeing. Isn’t this quite compatible with what I wrote in the second paragraph?
I’m not disagreeing with what you said, I’m only disagreeing with what you said I said. Clearer now? ;-)
I haven’t yet seen evidence that would lead me to conclude all of my unconscious mental processes are best represented as control circuits of that sort; there could be some relatively sophisticated modeling there as well, just hidden from my conscious ratiocination.
It’s true that PCT (at least as described in the 1973 book) doesn’t take adequate account of predictive modeling. The model that I was working with (even before I found out about the “memory-prediction” framework) was that people’s feelings are readouts of predictions the brain makes, based on simple pattern recognition of relevant memories… aka, the “somatic marker hypothesis”.
What I’ve realized since finding out about PCT, is that these predictions can be viewed as memory-based linkages between controllers—they predict, “if this perception goes to this level, then that perception will go to that level”, e.g. “IF I have to work hard, THEN I’m not smart enough”.
I already had this sort of IF-THEN rule formulation in my model (described in the first draft of TTD), but what I was missing then is that in order for a predictive rule like this to be meaningful, the target of the “then” has to be some quantity under control—like “self-esteem” or “smartness” in the previous example.
In the past, I considered these sort of simple predictive rules to be the primary drivers of human behavior (including rationalizations and other forms of verbal thinking), and they were the primary targets of my mindhacking work, because changing them changed people’s automatic responses and behavior, and quite often changed them permanently. (Presumably, in cases where we found a critical point or points in the controller network.)
This seemed like a sufficient model to me, pre-PCT, because it was easy to find these System 1 rules just underneath System 2′s thinking, whenever a belief or behavior pattern wasn’t working for someone.
Post-PCT, however, I realized that these rules are purely transitional—merely a subset of the edges of the control hierarchy graph. Where before I assumed that they were passive data, subject to arbitrary manipulation (i.e. mind-hacking), it’s become clear now that the system as a whole can add or drop these rules on the basis of their effects on the controllers.
Anyway, I’m probably getting into too much detail, now, but the point is that I agree with you: merely having controllers is not enough to model human behavior; you also need the memory-predictive links and somatic markers (that were already in my model), and you need PCT’s idea of the “reorganization system”—something that might be compared to an AI’s ability to rewrite its source code, only much much dumber. More like a simple genetic-programming optimizer, I would guess.
Ego depletion is simply a function of conflict between controllers—PCT predicts that two systems in conflict will trigger maximal activation of the neural pathways involved in the conflict, like two competing thermostats simultaneously running the heat and A/C at maximum. And this would naturally expected to result in overuse of brain fuel (e.g. glucose).
OK, this is very good; this is an area in which PCT seems to make relatively clear testable predictions, one of which correctly predicts already known data on ego depletion, brain activity and glucose level. Why didn’t you bring this up earlier? This is exactly the sort of thing we’ve been asking for. Clever fMRI studies showing a wide variety of mental distress as conflicts between different systems, escalating in activity and glucose use until one can’t keep up, would be strong evidence in favor of your account.
As I remarked elsewhere in the thread, it looks quite reasonable to me that we have some control circuits at various levels of our mental architecture; what I balk at is the assertion that these control circuits comprise all (or nearly all) of the architecture. But if evidence of this sort were found, I could be convinced.
OK, this is very good; this is an area in which PCT seems to make relatively clear testable predictions, one of which correctly predicts already known data on ego depletion, brain activity and glucose level. Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?
Probably because it seemed way too obvious to me. In the first draft of Thinking Things Done, I predicted we’d eventually find ego depletion to be an energy drain due to muscles fighting each other (rather than nerves as predicted by PCT), because that was an expected outcome from my model of conflicting impulses.
I thus viewed PCT as merely a minor enhancement over my own model (in this specific area), since it showed how you could get the effect even without any muscle movement. (My hypothesis was that emotion-suppression tasks in ego-depletion research were physically draining because they required you to override somatic markers.)
I actually think it’s pretty likely that both are the case, though—i.e., PCT’s maximum neural outputs would in some cases also cause conflicting muscle contractions, in addition to the neurally-based energy depletion. (Also, when I made my prediction, the research showing widespread brain activity for ego-depleting tasks hadn’t been done yet, or at least hadn’t made its way to me yet.)
Anyway, I have a tendency to forget that most people don’t know what I know; things like this seem obvious to me, as there are far fewer inferential steps between my (old) model and PCT, than there are between naive anthropomorphic psychology and PCT.
I don’t think the anthropomorphic frame is helpful, though. It’s like saying that a thermostat is “trying” to prevent the sun from warming up the room as it “wants” to.
It’d be a bit more accurate to simply say that we can have control circuits that require mutually incompatible states or actions.
PCT has a more general form of this idea that doesn’t require a specialized notion of an unreachable goal: it proposes a reorganization system that responds to chronic or intrinsic error signals by reorganizing the control circuits involved until the error goes away. An unreachable goal would just be one example of what could trigger this system.
PCT considers this “reorganziation” system to be the basis of trial-and-error learning as well, that is, continued failure to reach a goal prompts a series of variations in behavior until the error signal goes away. In the case of an unreachable goal, the reorganization will simply continue until the organism “gives up”—that is, reorganizes the control system so that the current condition is no longer considered an error, and thus experiences no motivation to pursue it.
This isn’t to say that we don’t have any ability to handle unreachable goals specially, just that the PCT model doesn’t need one.
This isn’t true. I can get immediate reward signals thinking about my goals over the next year or two. The real issues have more to do with whether your thoughts also trigger any error signals due to predictions of difficulty, stress, having to give up other things, etc. When those things are present, any positive reward is going to get drowned out by shorter-term negatives.
It didn’t, because the model you’re describing here is unnecessarily complicated. Ego depletion is simply a function of conflict between controllers—PCT predicts that two systems in conflict will trigger maximal activation of the neural pathways involved in the conflict, like two competing thermostats simultaneously running the heat and A/C at maximum. And this would naturally expected to result in overuse of brain fuel (e.g. glucose).
This isn’t really how it works, either. The difference between success and struggling is in one’s interpretation of events, not the events themselves. A successful person responds to negative events with, “Ah! I love a challenge!”, or at worst, “Well, I guess I learned one more way that doesn’t work.”
Conversely, a natural struggler’s interpretation of good things is that they won’t last, aren’t “real”, or “don’t count”.
Dweck’s research into mindsets also shows that it’s ridiculously easy to get people to think in this mindset, even without exposing them to any actual adversity whatsoever! So, it’s not a matter of exposure to adveristy or success; a person who has nothing but success in their early years may spend the rest of their life handicapped by it. (The downward spiral of many child stars being an all-too-obvious example.)
You can’t defeat it, and you don’t need to. What you need is to resolve your actual priorities. I’m still integrating the results of PCT into my own work, but the effects have been mindblowing at times.
This weekend, for example, I realized that every time I ever tried to “define my priorities” in the past (as requested by virtually every self-help book in existence), I was actually trying to make a list of what I thought my priorities should be… rather than what they truly were. And just realizing that tiny difference in perspective has completely changed my outlook on planning, and what I’ll be doing in the next few weeks.
The point? While I was trying to do what I thought I “should”, I was essentially ensuring that I would always be in conflict, always fighting this so-called “enemy” within. But by instead doing what I really want in the first place...
There’s no longer any “enemy” to “fight”.
It’s not the language of “wanting” that seems to be the problem; after all, you yourself talk about “what I really want in the first place”. I think, rather, you’re suggesting Roko amends that quote from “the things we want to do” to “the things we think we want to do” or “the things we think we should want to do”.
If that’s the case, I agree with you; the parts of my mind of which I’m not directly conscious are not something external to me, and fighting them as an “enemy within” has been (in my experience) a recipe for disaster. In particular, I’m often unconsciously aware of many factors that it’s hard to consciously acknowledge at the time; when I’ve felt the strain of forcing a conscious decision against unspecified internal resistance, that decision usually turns out badly for factors I should have seen at the time.
And yet, there is an important counterpoint: I would in fact choose to self-modify into an agent that values utilons more and fuzzies less, were it possible to ask Omega to do that. (Yes, I know, it’s easy to signal that I would do that, but Bayes damn it, I really would.) This limits the types of compromises that I am willing to consider between my various wants.
Yes, but that wasn’t my main objection. My main objection is that “trying to prevent us from doing the things we want to do” implies an opponent whose goal is to frustrate you, rather than a blind controller simply trying to restore a variable to its programmed range.
It’s not “out to get you” in some fashion, and far too much self-help material creates that kind of paranoia already. Certainly, I don’t want anybody getting the impression that I promote such irrational paranoia myself.
Now it’s my turn to be puzzled about whether we’re disagreeing. Isn’t this quite compatible with what I wrote in the second paragraph?
In any case, IAWYC, but I haven’t yet seen evidence that would lead me to conclude all of my unconscious mental processes are best represented as control circuits of that sort; there could be some relatively sophisticated modeling there as well, just hidden from my conscious ratiocination.
I’m not disagreeing with what you said, I’m only disagreeing with what you said I said. Clearer now? ;-)
It’s true that PCT (at least as described in the 1973 book) doesn’t take adequate account of predictive modeling. The model that I was working with (even before I found out about the “memory-prediction” framework) was that people’s feelings are readouts of predictions the brain makes, based on simple pattern recognition of relevant memories… aka, the “somatic marker hypothesis”.
What I’ve realized since finding out about PCT, is that these predictions can be viewed as memory-based linkages between controllers—they predict, “if this perception goes to this level, then that perception will go to that level”, e.g. “IF I have to work hard, THEN I’m not smart enough”.
I already had this sort of IF-THEN rule formulation in my model (described in the first draft of TTD), but what I was missing then is that in order for a predictive rule like this to be meaningful, the target of the “then” has to be some quantity under control—like “self-esteem” or “smartness” in the previous example.
In the past, I considered these sort of simple predictive rules to be the primary drivers of human behavior (including rationalizations and other forms of verbal thinking), and they were the primary targets of my mindhacking work, because changing them changed people’s automatic responses and behavior, and quite often changed them permanently. (Presumably, in cases where we found a critical point or points in the controller network.)
This seemed like a sufficient model to me, pre-PCT, because it was easy to find these System 1 rules just underneath System 2′s thinking, whenever a belief or behavior pattern wasn’t working for someone.
Post-PCT, however, I realized that these rules are purely transitional—merely a subset of the edges of the control hierarchy graph. Where before I assumed that they were passive data, subject to arbitrary manipulation (i.e. mind-hacking), it’s become clear now that the system as a whole can add or drop these rules on the basis of their effects on the controllers.
Anyway, I’m probably getting into too much detail, now, but the point is that I agree with you: merely having controllers is not enough to model human behavior; you also need the memory-predictive links and somatic markers (that were already in my model), and you need PCT’s idea of the “reorganization system”—something that might be compared to an AI’s ability to rewrite its source code, only much much dumber. More like a simple genetic-programming optimizer, I would guess.
OK, this is very good; this is an area in which PCT seems to make relatively clear testable predictions, one of which correctly predicts already known data on ego depletion, brain activity and glucose level. Why didn’t you bring this up earlier? This is exactly the sort of thing we’ve been asking for. Clever fMRI studies showing a wide variety of mental distress as conflicts between different systems, escalating in activity and glucose use until one can’t keep up, would be strong evidence in favor of your account.
As I remarked elsewhere in the thread, it looks quite reasonable to me that we have some control circuits at various levels of our mental architecture; what I balk at is the assertion that these control circuits comprise all (or nearly all) of the architecture. But if evidence of this sort were found, I could be convinced.
Probably because it seemed way too obvious to me. In the first draft of Thinking Things Done, I predicted we’d eventually find ego depletion to be an energy drain due to muscles fighting each other (rather than nerves as predicted by PCT), because that was an expected outcome from my model of conflicting impulses.
I thus viewed PCT as merely a minor enhancement over my own model (in this specific area), since it showed how you could get the effect even without any muscle movement. (My hypothesis was that emotion-suppression tasks in ego-depletion research were physically draining because they required you to override somatic markers.)
I actually think it’s pretty likely that both are the case, though—i.e., PCT’s maximum neural outputs would in some cases also cause conflicting muscle contractions, in addition to the neurally-based energy depletion. (Also, when I made my prediction, the research showing widespread brain activity for ego-depleting tasks hadn’t been done yet, or at least hadn’t made its way to me yet.)
Anyway, I have a tendency to forget that most people don’t know what I know; things like this seem obvious to me, as there are far fewer inferential steps between my (old) model and PCT, than there are between naive anthropomorphic psychology and PCT.