“shift one’s goals to refer to things that are fully under one’s control.”
Almost impossible, we’re too causally entangled with uncertainties for most of our goals. The obvious method is to hold oneself blameless for the parts not under control but the brain seems to have a hard time with this, stressing yourself out wondering if there was anything else you could have done. This combined with hindsight bias makes people feel awful because they could have had their goal “if only they had done X” ignoring that there was no plausible way for them to have known that beforehand. I think this behavior is adaptive as it seems like part of our learning algorithm. In particular the feeling awful is a motivator to think about what information you should seek out in future similar situations that you didn’t this time. That this adaptation continues to execute even when there actually is no way to get the information is another cognitive cost shortcut bug.
I think this behavior is adaptive as it seems like part of our learning algorithm. In particular the feeling awful is a motivator to think about what information you should seek out in future similar situations that you didn’t this time. That this adaptation continues to execute even when there actually is no way to get the information is another cognitive cost shortcut bug.
Thanks. This little observation makes a lot of sense, and explains aspects of my behaviour that I really didn’t have a good explanation for. In particular, I’ve been trying to grow a small business for a couple of years now, and akrasia has been very difficult to fight at times. The correlation between effort and reward is virtually non-existent except over a multi-month period, and the constant second guessing can easily lead to paralysis.
Did I take the most optimal approach? Should I have done something different? I feel bad about it, but there just isn’t any way to obtain the necessary data in a timely fashion. This shouldn’t cause akrasia, but it does.
Almost impossible, we’re too causally entangled with uncertainties for most of our goals.
I don’t follow you. I may have little control over what I weigh or what I look like, but I certainly have more control over how many repetitions of an exercise I perform or how many calories I eat.
The obvious method is to hold oneself blameless for the parts not under control but the brain seems to have a hard time with this, stressing yourself out wondering if there was anything else you could have done.
If you’re doing that, then you haven’t actually set a goal of the type I’m describing. The goal, “eat no more than X calories today” is not the same as “lose X tenths of a pound today”. The former goal is unlikely to create any wondering about whether you could have done something else, unless you actually fail to achieve it. ;-)
But those are instrumental sub-goals. The worrying about whether you should have done something else is worrying about whether you should have had different sub-goals in pursuit of your terminal goal.
More usefully (I hope): what I’m saying is that you determine that you are better off having acheived that subgoal, even if it doesn’t appear to produce any progress towards the supergoal. At the very least, you have gathered some information that you didn’t previously have; at most, you will have moved some of the way towards the supergoal.
right, that’s specifically what I’m saying the human brain refuses to do. We seem incapable of not thinking about the utility we would have gained from alternate sub-goal selection.
Let me illustrate. I believe playing the lottery is of negative expected utility. But let’s just say that if I were to play the lottery that I would play the numbers 4-16-72-65-43-97
Now say I check the next lottery and those numbers happen to win a jackpot. I will be UNABLE to avoid feeling angry I did not choose to buy a lottery ticket even though I know my past self had no logical reason to buy one. To clarify I think I am much better at not feeling angry in this type of situation than most, but still predict that it would induce an emotional reaction.
I have set goals to follow a particular diet without having any particular goal for how much weight to lose, and not experienced the regret you describe. I would certainly prefer that any given day’s weight be less than the day before, and I occasionally wish I’d done better at following my plan(s), but have not experienced any sort of desire that I’d done better so that I would have lost more weight.
It’s important to clarify that I am emphatically not saying to set a fake process-goal as a means to achieving your end-product goal. Rather, I’m saying that you must actually abandon your product goal and replace it with a pure process goal, having no attachment to achieving a particular result.
So, the lottery example is really quite unrelated to this sort of thing, unless your goal were to play the lottery every day, not to win the lottery. ;-) In that sense, I could say that by making a process goal (e.g. certain amount of salad eaten each day), I am “buying tickets” in the hopes of getting a win on average, without paying much attention to individual wins and losses.
In the last year or so, I’ve lost 40+ pounds by my rather erratic method, despite having had relatively few days where I’ve done all that well at achieving my process goals. It’s pretty clear to me that I could (potentially) be going a LOT faster if I were better at following my process goals, but at the same time, it’s rather nice that I’m making progress at all. If I’d been following product goals instead (how much weight to lose), I undoubtedly would’ve spent most of my time frustrated, and likely given up on some approaches way too prematurely.
Rather, I’m saying that you must actually abandon your product goal and replace it with a pure process goal, having no attachment to achieving a particular result.
That seems like a recipe for lost purposes to me...
Attachment and desire are two separate things. I can desire to lose weight, without being attached to losing weight on any given day. As mentioned in the grandparent comment, this has actually netted me a good 40 pounds of weight loss. How are your non-”lost purposes” doing, instrumentally?
“shift one’s goals to refer to things that are fully under one’s control.”
Almost impossible, we’re too causally entangled with uncertainties for most of our goals. The obvious method is to hold oneself blameless for the parts not under control but the brain seems to have a hard time with this, stressing yourself out wondering if there was anything else you could have done. This combined with hindsight bias makes people feel awful because they could have had their goal “if only they had done X” ignoring that there was no plausible way for them to have known that beforehand. I think this behavior is adaptive as it seems like part of our learning algorithm. In particular the feeling awful is a motivator to think about what information you should seek out in future similar situations that you didn’t this time. That this adaptation continues to execute even when there actually is no way to get the information is another cognitive cost shortcut bug.
Thanks. This little observation makes a lot of sense, and explains aspects of my behaviour that I really didn’t have a good explanation for. In particular, I’ve been trying to grow a small business for a couple of years now, and akrasia has been very difficult to fight at times. The correlation between effort and reward is virtually non-existent except over a multi-month period, and the constant second guessing can easily lead to paralysis.
Did I take the most optimal approach? Should I have done something different? I feel bad about it, but there just isn’t any way to obtain the necessary data in a timely fashion. This shouldn’t cause akrasia, but it does.
I don’t follow you. I may have little control over what I weigh or what I look like, but I certainly have more control over how many repetitions of an exercise I perform or how many calories I eat.
If you’re doing that, then you haven’t actually set a goal of the type I’m describing. The goal, “eat no more than X calories today” is not the same as “lose X tenths of a pound today”. The former goal is unlikely to create any wondering about whether you could have done something else, unless you actually fail to achieve it. ;-)
But those are instrumental sub-goals. The worrying about whether you should have done something else is worrying about whether you should have had different sub-goals in pursuit of your terminal goal.
Oh. Then don’t do that. ;-)
More usefully (I hope): what I’m saying is that you determine that you are better off having acheived that subgoal, even if it doesn’t appear to produce any progress towards the supergoal. At the very least, you have gathered some information that you didn’t previously have; at most, you will have moved some of the way towards the supergoal.
right, that’s specifically what I’m saying the human brain refuses to do. We seem incapable of not thinking about the utility we would have gained from alternate sub-goal selection.
Let me illustrate. I believe playing the lottery is of negative expected utility. But let’s just say that if I were to play the lottery that I would play the numbers 4-16-72-65-43-97
Now say I check the next lottery and those numbers happen to win a jackpot. I will be UNABLE to avoid feeling angry I did not choose to buy a lottery ticket even though I know my past self had no logical reason to buy one. To clarify I think I am much better at not feeling angry in this type of situation than most, but still predict that it would induce an emotional reaction.
Who’s “we”? This sounds like an instance of “typical mind fallacy” here.
myself and everyone I’ve discussed it with so far. I believe you if you claim to be a counter example.
I have set goals to follow a particular diet without having any particular goal for how much weight to lose, and not experienced the regret you describe. I would certainly prefer that any given day’s weight be less than the day before, and I occasionally wish I’d done better at following my plan(s), but have not experienced any sort of desire that I’d done better so that I would have lost more weight.
It’s important to clarify that I am emphatically not saying to set a fake process-goal as a means to achieving your end-product goal. Rather, I’m saying that you must actually abandon your product goal and replace it with a pure process goal, having no attachment to achieving a particular result.
So, the lottery example is really quite unrelated to this sort of thing, unless your goal were to play the lottery every day, not to win the lottery. ;-) In that sense, I could say that by making a process goal (e.g. certain amount of salad eaten each day), I am “buying tickets” in the hopes of getting a win on average, without paying much attention to individual wins and losses.
In the last year or so, I’ve lost 40+ pounds by my rather erratic method, despite having had relatively few days where I’ve done all that well at achieving my process goals. It’s pretty clear to me that I could (potentially) be going a LOT faster if I were better at following my process goals, but at the same time, it’s rather nice that I’m making progress at all. If I’d been following product goals instead (how much weight to lose), I undoubtedly would’ve spent most of my time frustrated, and likely given up on some approaches way too prematurely.
That seems like a recipe for lost purposes to me...
Attachment and desire are two separate things. I can desire to lose weight, without being attached to losing weight on any given day. As mentioned in the grandparent comment, this has actually netted me a good 40 pounds of weight loss. How are your non-”lost purposes” doing, instrumentally?
Okay, I understand what you mean now.