What if anything, would convince you to stop (or start) eating animals? Not merely to admit, verbally, that it is an acceptable thing for others to do, or even the moral or prudent thing for you to do, but to actually start trying to do it?
In my case: adequate alternatives. I tried to become a vegetarian once before I succeeded. However, this was before the day I spontaneously woke up one morning with a taste for vegetables (it happened, it was weird), so I ate grilled cheese every day for a few days and then gave up. Later, when I a) liked vegetables and b) had access to adequate kitchen facilities so I could learn to cook, the transition was close to effortless. I could always arrange to have something around that I was enthusiastic about eating that wasn’t meat.
What, if anything, would convince you to stop (or start) expecting monogamy in your romantic relationships?
I don’t trust myself to be well-calibrated about this. People who felt strongly as I do when they were my age have undergone significant changes. However, I’ve discussed this some.
To save (or borrow) significant amounts of money?
I have a dreadful aversion to debt I’m not sure I can pay back, so I guess I’d have to find not doing whatever would be done with the loan more aversive than carrying the debt, and expect to be able to pay back (or consider my enterprise important enough to be willing to expect not to pay back) the amount. So far I’ve never seriously cared about accomplishing anything that I could only accomplish with a large sum of borrowed money. Savings-wise, I already save all my income by default and only spend it after careful consideration.
To drop one hobby and pick up another? To move across the country?
I did both in the past year. I have been carefully cultivating the habit of a) noting when I do something “for fun”, and b) continually evaluating whether those things are still fun. Things that I do “for fun” that are no longer fun, I need to repair or drop. The extreme case for me was acknowledging that I’d gone to grad school because I thought it would be fun, and then it wasn’t anymore. So I dropped out and went to work at SIAI for a while, incidentally across the country. I’m pretty good at determining whether things are still fun by introspecting; remembering to do it is the problem.
In my case: adequate alternatives. I tried to become a vegetarian once before I succeeded. However, this was before the day I spontaneously woke up one morning with a taste for vegetables (it happened, it was weird), so I ate grilled cheese every day for a few days and then gave up. Later, when I a) liked vegetables and b) had access to adequate kitchen facilities so I could learn to cook, the transition was close to effortless. I could always arrange to have something around that I was enthusiastic about eating that wasn’t meat.
I don’t trust myself to be well-calibrated about this. People who felt strongly as I do when they were my age have undergone significant changes. However, I’ve discussed this some.
I have a dreadful aversion to debt I’m not sure I can pay back, so I guess I’d have to find not doing whatever would be done with the loan more aversive than carrying the debt, and expect to be able to pay back (or consider my enterprise important enough to be willing to expect not to pay back) the amount. So far I’ve never seriously cared about accomplishing anything that I could only accomplish with a large sum of borrowed money. Savings-wise, I already save all my income by default and only spend it after careful consideration.
I did both in the past year. I have been carefully cultivating the habit of a) noting when I do something “for fun”, and b) continually evaluating whether those things are still fun. Things that I do “for fun” that are no longer fun, I need to repair or drop. The extreme case for me was acknowledging that I’d gone to grad school because I thought it would be fun, and then it wasn’t anymore. So I dropped out and went to work at SIAI for a while, incidentally across the country. I’m pretty good at determining whether things are still fun by introspecting; remembering to do it is the problem.