Scott has some useful, if sobering, thoughts about this on his blog and I think I agree with him. He ends up positing that intrinsic motivation is more or less fixed and describes the whole process as a fascination lottery: there are certain things we find inherently interesting and motivating, and other things we could never really be interested in, even if we really really wanted to.
And my attempts to hack intrinsic motivation, which would be like a instant win condition for everything if I could achieve it, have been mostly unsuccessful and left me with severe doubt it is even possible. So I have pretty much given up on math.
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But the thing is, I couldn’t choose to be interested in sports any more than I could choose to be interested in math or a huge sports fan could choose to be interested in psychology or a gay person could choose to be interested in women. I mean, there’s probably some wiggle room, maybe if I put a lot of effort into finding the most interesting sports and learning everything about them I could appreciate them a little. But would I have comparative advantage over the kid who memorized the stats of every pitcher in both leagues when he was 8? Barring getting hit by some kinda cosmic rays or something, I don’t think that’ll everhappen.
That being said, it seems a little defeatist. Perhaps there’s some way to really choose your fascinations...
I basically agree. Motivation seems to be a moderately deep thing (deep as in Seligman’s personality depth scale). Depth means you can’t just hack your superficial interest. You have to use your unchangeable deep interests to cover other topics.
At least that is what worked for me. My interest for problem solving, esp. clear cut ones as in math led to computer science, physics and—after having built a suitably encompassing world model—social science. By using my fascination for solving problems analytically I could apply this to social situations. Sure, taking social situations analytically is bound to appear awkward. But it fits my personality and it allows to build experience fast. And after some time routine smoothes the edges.
I wonder whether this could work the other way around. Say you are a game geek. If you’d like to be interested in math or physics you could hunt down suitable games. First ideas might be Phun, Crazy Machines, Dragon Box 12+ but there are probably more out there. You could get into educational games. You could try to look deeper into games. Download games for Unity or Scratch and look how the really work. Yes it is not easy, but games like other goods are made for consumption. See behind the screen thrown by the game optimizers. Try to see the principles behind the superficial game objectives. The game played by the developers and marketeers. See life as game.
If your fascination is with reading and writing move (slowly, very gradually) to books and topics that have a focus on the topics you’d like to have. To go to history first go to stories in the past then historical novels, then good biographical stories, and so on. For math/phsics read stories with more math in it. Science fiction might be an avenue. Make a plan. Get into a suitable community.
Social motivations probably work best by getting into a suitable community—except that this might break with your existing one.
I think plausible paths can be constructed easily for many motivations. How and which might be open to discussion.
From personal experience, I disagree with this. Many times I have thought “I could do that, but it wouldn’t be fun”, then done it, and found it to be fun.
This sounds like a separate phenomenon, where you fail to predict your preferences when you have little direct experience. But this is different than if you have tried, e.g. studying mathematics a large number of times, and find that you consistently don’t enjoy it.
Of course, people often confuse the two situations: They think that mental simulation of an activity, or trying an activity once or twice, is enough to really claim that they don’t enjoy it. For example: the person-who-doesn’t-like-dancing but has only tried dancing once or twice in some high-stress public situation.
I agree, it’s a separate phenomenon, but I think it’s the more common one. For example, I doubt Scott ever seriously tried to become interested in sports. I did not understand how I could possibly enjoy sports, at all, ever. Then I read up on American football and watched a few games to broaden my horizons. And do you know what? It was surprisingly fun. I’m still not a sports fan, but I understand how I could become one if I needed to.
Finding something unexpectedly fun seems different from finding something unfun and then later finding it fun. (Which in turn is different from finding something unfun and subsequently causing yourself to find it fun.)
I think “you can’t condition yourself” is pretty different from “intrinsic motivation is fixed”.
Ozzy was used as an example in his essay. If you ask me, Ozzy is fascinated by gender because Ozzy is of atypical gender. Gender Studies majors are often gender atypical themselves, and I think it’s fairly obvious that this something borne out of life experience.
I’m sure some things are fixed, but there are environmental features here that can be hacked. Ozzy might be physically predisposed to interest in a broad thing like “people’s feelings” or something, but there is some sort of psychodynamic process routing this to gender specifically.
I think the right question to ask is “what is that process, and why is it so hard to trigger on purpose?”.
That being said, it seems a little defeatist. Perhaps there’s some way to really choose your fascinations...
Choosing fascinations is very much a system 1 game.
Ever notice how smart people are more likely to get into math and athletic people are more likely to get into sports? Heck, you can watch someone go from “sensitive artist” to “bodybuilder” about as fast as it takes to realize that their body would do well at the latter.
I’ve been fairly successful choosing my fascinations, both in the sense of system 2 successfully influencing system 1 and in the sense of being happy with what holds my interest. The trick is to get close to system 1 so you can understand what it’s trying to say and so that you know how to talk so that it’ll listen.
“Focusing” by Gendlin is probably a good place to start, even if it sounds a bit “new agey”.
“Focusing” by Gendlin is probably a good place to start, even if it sounds a bit “new agey”
That’s the same Gendlin, by the way, who coined the Litany of Gendlin. And there isn’t actually anything particularly new-agey about Focusing except the name. (Which I think is horrible, because it gives the impression of a diametrically opposite mental state than the one required.)
In LW terms, Focusing equals Actually Being Curious, i.e. meeting yourself with an actual desire to know or discover something. (A rather basic prerequisite for introspection, actually.)
The concept is totally legit, but I do think more than just the name that comes off “new agey”. I certainly got that impression when reading the book and so did a few people I recommended it to. So now I add that to the disclaimer so people will know to anticipate that and not take it as evidence that its not awesome.
The name didn’t sit right with me for a while too since “focusing” as applied to mental processes usually makes you think of honing in on one particular thing while shutting things out. I think what he had in mind was more like looking at your mind through a microscope where you start seeing everything as a blurry mess that resolves into focus through this process—and that actually seems to fit to me, if not well spelled out by the word “focusing”. If I had to pick a name off the top of my head, I might go with “mental grain refinement”.
Agreed that it the payload is roughly equivalent to Actually Being Curious, but I think it’s important to not let the book get rounded down to that. Not only does it paint a pretty clear picture on how to actually do it as well as giving you a frame work to work under, it applies to far more things than one might think (including, for example, “lotteries of fascinations”), so it would be a shame to get it pigeon holed.
By the way, you still working on all the mind hacking stuff? I have been for a few years and I think it’s silly that I haven’t yet approached you to chat and compare notes.
looking at your mind through a microscope where you start seeing everything as a blurry mess that resolves into focus through this process—and that actually seems to fit to me, if not well spelled out by the word “focusing”
Yep. It makes sense in that context, of course.
If I had to pick a name off the top of my head, I might go with “mental grain refinement”
I’d suggest “Tuning In”, except that the youth these days don’t actually turn knobs to tune in a radio station any more either. Even cameras auto-focus these days! ;-)
(The NLP and hypnosis folks tend to call similar processes “trans-derivational search”, but I wouldn’t wish that term on anybody who’s not a specialist.)
applies to far more things than one might think (including, for example, “lotteries of fascinations”)
I’m curious how you’d apply it. I mean, removing blocks to interest in a subject… boredom, disgust, etc. predicated on bad experiences or subliminally-absorbed stereotypes, I can see that. But building an interest? I guess I haven’t done much research into more generative techniques.
By the way, you still working on all the mind hacking stuff? I have been for a few years and I think it’s silly that I haven’t yet approached you to chat and compare notes.
Sillier still that I haven’t organized all my notes yet. (Granted, I’m coming up on ten years’ worth now.) And yes, yes I am still working on all that stuff. I just haven’t been seriously promoting anything for sale for some years now, as I’ve been focused on finding methods for dealing with my worst blocks. That work is getting really close to done now, though… I hope. ;-)
(The NLP and hypnosis folks tend to call similar processes “trans-derivational search”, but I wouldn’t wish that term on anybody who’s not a specialist.)
I think the “focusing” thing is a bit more than just a transderivational search—or rather a specific application of the same thing. “focusing” contains a lot of instructions on where to point your curiosity and what you can get out of it.
I’m curious how you’d apply it. I mean, removing blocks to interest in a subject… boredom, disgust, etc. predicated on bad experiences or subliminally-absorbed stereotypes, I can see that. But building an interest? I guess I haven’t done much research into more generative techniques.
Well, removing blocks is definitely a big part of it. With no blocks there it’s just a conversation with system 1 about what’s important—and that part can often just happen on its own.
I think your “organize your desk” video is a good example on the small scale. People aren’t motivated to do it not just because they are blocking themselves with aversive associations but also because they’re not associating the good of the clean desk with the act of organizing it. Applied to interest in a subject is just a larger scale application of the same stuff. Instead of one picture of a clean desk, it’s a whole series of possible futures and possible payoffs and the like.
My strongest example—perhaps because I was most conscious of it having not yet integrated the skills—actually predates my departure on this mind hacking journey and in fact applies to the motivation I had to do it.
When I first realized that there’s big low hanging fruit it wasn’t a complete automatic takeover. I was still sorta interested in other hobbies which (according to system2) didn’t really pay off the same. And like, do you realize how important it is if half the stuff it seems like hypnosis might be able to do is actually possible?
So I had to deliberately spend some time thinking about the alternate ways I wanted to spend my time and actually visualizing where they’d go and what I’d get out of it. And doing the same for the much more uncertain future where I dive into this with more than mild curiosity. And then having deflated alternatives and connected it more strongly with the potential rewards, it had earned my fascination big time (since then it has been a fairly automatically self reinforcing thing). And the motivating images have changed, of course, as I get a more realistic/detailed idea of whats doable/desirable.
Sillier still that I haven’t organized all my notes yet. (Granted, I’m coming up on ten years’ worth now.) And yes, yes I am still working on all that stuff. I just haven’t been seriously promoting anything for sale for some years now, as I’ve been focused on finding methods for dealing with my worst blocks. That work is getting really close to done now, though… I hope. ;-)
Nah, that part is hard. I’m in a similar place myself, though not 10 years worth. I’ve been trying to organize them into blog posts as an easy to get down form of thoughts, but then I kinda got stuck tying the last pieces together and I’m backlogged 30 or so posts. But I’m “close” :). It tends to help when I have an interested person to bounce ideas off of and serve as a foil for organizing my thoughts (which I do have, and need to make more use of!).
Anyway, even if not as done as it “should” be for a vaguely meaningful sense of “should”, I wouldn’t call it silly the way it’s silly to not have said “yo, you wanna chat sometime and compare notes?”
Yo, you wanna chat sometime and compare—er, I mean organize notes?
Scott has some useful, if sobering, thoughts about this on his blog and I think I agree with him. He ends up positing that intrinsic motivation is more or less fixed and describes the whole process as a fascination lottery: there are certain things we find inherently interesting and motivating, and other things we could never really be interested in, even if we really really wanted to.
...
That being said, it seems a little defeatist. Perhaps there’s some way to really choose your fascinations...
Scott basically observes that you can’t do some thing through shear behaviorism. That only means that a certain tool doesn’t work.
I basically agree. Motivation seems to be a moderately deep thing (deep as in Seligman’s personality depth scale). Depth means you can’t just hack your superficial interest. You have to use your unchangeable deep interests to cover other topics.
At least that is what worked for me. My interest for problem solving, esp. clear cut ones as in math led to computer science, physics and—after having built a suitably encompassing world model—social science. By using my fascination for solving problems analytically I could apply this to social situations. Sure, taking social situations analytically is bound to appear awkward. But it fits my personality and it allows to build experience fast. And after some time routine smoothes the edges.
I wonder whether this could work the other way around. Say you are a game geek. If you’d like to be interested in math or physics you could hunt down suitable games. First ideas might be Phun, Crazy Machines, Dragon Box 12+ but there are probably more out there. You could get into educational games. You could try to look deeper into games. Download games for Unity or Scratch and look how the really work. Yes it is not easy, but games like other goods are made for consumption. See behind the screen thrown by the game optimizers. Try to see the principles behind the superficial game objectives. The game played by the developers and marketeers. See life as game.
If your fascination is with reading and writing move (slowly, very gradually) to books and topics that have a focus on the topics you’d like to have. To go to history first go to stories in the past then historical novels, then good biographical stories, and so on. For math/phsics read stories with more math in it. Science fiction might be an avenue. Make a plan. Get into a suitable community.
Social motivations probably work best by getting into a suitable community—except that this might break with your existing one.
I think plausible paths can be constructed easily for many motivations. How and which might be open to discussion.
From personal experience, I disagree with this. Many times I have thought “I could do that, but it wouldn’t be fun”, then done it, and found it to be fun.
This sounds like a separate phenomenon, where you fail to predict your preferences when you have little direct experience. But this is different than if you have tried, e.g. studying mathematics a large number of times, and find that you consistently don’t enjoy it.
Of course, people often confuse the two situations: They think that mental simulation of an activity, or trying an activity once or twice, is enough to really claim that they don’t enjoy it. For example: the person-who-doesn’t-like-dancing but has only tried dancing once or twice in some high-stress public situation.
I agree, it’s a separate phenomenon, but I think it’s the more common one. For example, I doubt Scott ever seriously tried to become interested in sports. I did not understand how I could possibly enjoy sports, at all, ever. Then I read up on American football and watched a few games to broaden my horizons. And do you know what? It was surprisingly fun. I’m still not a sports fan, but I understand how I could become one if I needed to.
Finding something unexpectedly fun seems different from finding something unfun and then later finding it fun. (Which in turn is different from finding something unfun and subsequently causing yourself to find it fun.)
I think “you can’t condition yourself” is pretty different from “intrinsic motivation is fixed”.
Ozzy was used as an example in his essay. If you ask me, Ozzy is fascinated by gender because Ozzy is of atypical gender. Gender Studies majors are often gender atypical themselves, and I think it’s fairly obvious that this something borne out of life experience.
I’m sure some things are fixed, but there are environmental features here that can be hacked. Ozzy might be physically predisposed to interest in a broad thing like “people’s feelings” or something, but there is some sort of psychodynamic process routing this to gender specifically.
I think the right question to ask is “what is that process, and why is it so hard to trigger on purpose?”.
Choosing fascinations is very much a system 1 game.
Ever notice how smart people are more likely to get into math and athletic people are more likely to get into sports? Heck, you can watch someone go from “sensitive artist” to “bodybuilder” about as fast as it takes to realize that their body would do well at the latter.
I’ve been fairly successful choosing my fascinations, both in the sense of system 2 successfully influencing system 1 and in the sense of being happy with what holds my interest. The trick is to get close to system 1 so you can understand what it’s trying to say and so that you know how to talk so that it’ll listen.
“Focusing” by Gendlin is probably a good place to start, even if it sounds a bit “new agey”.
That’s the same Gendlin, by the way, who coined the Litany of Gendlin. And there isn’t actually anything particularly new-agey about Focusing except the name. (Which I think is horrible, because it gives the impression of a diametrically opposite mental state than the one required.)
In LW terms, Focusing equals Actually Being Curious, i.e. meeting yourself with an actual desire to know or discover something. (A rather basic prerequisite for introspection, actually.)
Mhmm.
The concept is totally legit, but I do think more than just the name that comes off “new agey”. I certainly got that impression when reading the book and so did a few people I recommended it to. So now I add that to the disclaimer so people will know to anticipate that and not take it as evidence that its not awesome.
The name didn’t sit right with me for a while too since “focusing” as applied to mental processes usually makes you think of honing in on one particular thing while shutting things out. I think what he had in mind was more like looking at your mind through a microscope where you start seeing everything as a blurry mess that resolves into focus through this process—and that actually seems to fit to me, if not well spelled out by the word “focusing”. If I had to pick a name off the top of my head, I might go with “mental grain refinement”.
Agreed that it the payload is roughly equivalent to Actually Being Curious, but I think it’s important to not let the book get rounded down to that. Not only does it paint a pretty clear picture on how to actually do it as well as giving you a frame work to work under, it applies to far more things than one might think (including, for example, “lotteries of fascinations”), so it would be a shame to get it pigeon holed.
By the way, you still working on all the mind hacking stuff? I have been for a few years and I think it’s silly that I haven’t yet approached you to chat and compare notes.
Yep. It makes sense in that context, of course.
I’d suggest “Tuning In”, except that the youth these days don’t actually turn knobs to tune in a radio station any more either. Even cameras auto-focus these days! ;-)
(The NLP and hypnosis folks tend to call similar processes “trans-derivational search”, but I wouldn’t wish that term on anybody who’s not a specialist.)
I’m curious how you’d apply it. I mean, removing blocks to interest in a subject… boredom, disgust, etc. predicated on bad experiences or subliminally-absorbed stereotypes, I can see that. But building an interest? I guess I haven’t done much research into more generative techniques.
Sillier still that I haven’t organized all my notes yet. (Granted, I’m coming up on ten years’ worth now.) And yes, yes I am still working on all that stuff. I just haven’t been seriously promoting anything for sale for some years now, as I’ve been focused on finding methods for dealing with my worst blocks. That work is getting really close to done now, though… I hope. ;-)
I think the “focusing” thing is a bit more than just a transderivational search—or rather a specific application of the same thing. “focusing” contains a lot of instructions on where to point your curiosity and what you can get out of it.
Well, removing blocks is definitely a big part of it. With no blocks there it’s just a conversation with system 1 about what’s important—and that part can often just happen on its own.
I think your “organize your desk” video is a good example on the small scale. People aren’t motivated to do it not just because they are blocking themselves with aversive associations but also because they’re not associating the good of the clean desk with the act of organizing it. Applied to interest in a subject is just a larger scale application of the same stuff. Instead of one picture of a clean desk, it’s a whole series of possible futures and possible payoffs and the like.
My strongest example—perhaps because I was most conscious of it having not yet integrated the skills—actually predates my departure on this mind hacking journey and in fact applies to the motivation I had to do it.
When I first realized that there’s big low hanging fruit it wasn’t a complete automatic takeover. I was still sorta interested in other hobbies which (according to system2) didn’t really pay off the same. And like, do you realize how important it is if half the stuff it seems like hypnosis might be able to do is actually possible?
So I had to deliberately spend some time thinking about the alternate ways I wanted to spend my time and actually visualizing where they’d go and what I’d get out of it. And doing the same for the much more uncertain future where I dive into this with more than mild curiosity. And then having deflated alternatives and connected it more strongly with the potential rewards, it had earned my fascination big time (since then it has been a fairly automatically self reinforcing thing). And the motivating images have changed, of course, as I get a more realistic/detailed idea of whats doable/desirable.
Nah, that part is hard. I’m in a similar place myself, though not 10 years worth. I’ve been trying to organize them into blog posts as an easy to get down form of thoughts, but then I kinda got stuck tying the last pieces together and I’m backlogged 30 or so posts. But I’m “close” :). It tends to help when I have an interested person to bounce ideas off of and serve as a foil for organizing my thoughts (which I do have, and need to make more use of!).
Anyway, even if not as done as it “should” be for a vaguely meaningful sense of “should”, I wouldn’t call it silly the way it’s silly to not have said “yo, you wanna chat sometime and compare notes?”
Yo, you wanna chat sometime and compare—er, I mean organize notes?