In my head, this is flavored as a kind of question substitution. Ben was wishfully living in the universe where things would go the way he wanted them to, rather in the universe where things just are what they are, and you have to adapt to the rules that are handed to you. The question Ben was originally faced with was something like “how do I talk my mom into letting me stay out late?” This is a hard question, with no clear, predetermined roadmap.
Not performing this kind of question substitution is the kind of thing I view as a key skill that correlates strongly with psychological development, and in particular that the divide you are pointing at here is the one between pre- and post-formal stages, with the formal stage being a period of transition from the wishful-thinking worldview to the actually-doing-it worldview.
But even if you disagree with the developmental psychology relationship, making the change from wishful-thinking to actually-doing-it is the thing that was the seed of my motivation starting about 4 years ago when I moved to Berkeley and discovered way more wishful-thinking than I thought existed in the community when I read what people wrote online. Developmental psychology has been one tool for helping me understand why this divide exists, and I like this idea of talking about “scoring points” because it describes a what of what it seems to me people are doing from the inside where they play the game to win but play the game at a lower level where they don’t even see the bigger game being played around them.
I think there’s something here about pre-post-formal in various contexts or something. Like, I’ve just added a “related to” link to Abram’s post about third person perspective, because it feels to me like Ben is being formal, just not in relationship to his mother. He’s being formal with respect to this imagined impartial judge who’s looking down on both him and his mother and awarding the victory to whoever’s scored the most points.
Not performing this kind of question substitution is the kind of thing I view as a key skill that correlates strongly with psychological development, and in particular that the divide you are pointing at here is the one between pre- and post-formal stages, with the formal stage being a period of transition from the wishful-thinking worldview to the actually-doing-it worldview.
But even if you disagree with the developmental psychology relationship, making the change from wishful-thinking to actually-doing-it is the thing that was the seed of my motivation starting about 4 years ago when I moved to Berkeley and discovered way more wishful-thinking than I thought existed in the community when I read what people wrote online. Developmental psychology has been one tool for helping me understand why this divide exists, and I like this idea of talking about “scoring points” because it describes a what of what it seems to me people are doing from the inside where they play the game to win but play the game at a lower level where they don’t even see the bigger game being played around them.
I think there’s something here about pre-post-formal in various contexts or something. Like, I’ve just added a “related to” link to Abram’s post about third person perspective, because it feels to me like Ben is being formal, just not in relationship to his mother. He’s being formal with respect to this imagined impartial judge who’s looking down on both him and his mother and awarding the victory to whoever’s scored the most points.