It seems that some self-help methods never ask their adherents to test the goals of the framework against the results, and I wonder if some ingrained fear of permanent records of failure is behind this.
Not every methodologist is like this; I’m insistent upon tests, because I don’t want people wasting time on stuff that doesn’t work. It’s too discouraging—for me as well as them!
I have observed that there are different types of processes people use that require different means to change. If you use the wrong tool for the job, the thing simply won’t change, no matter how many times you do it. So, as long as I know that somebody has successfully used a given tool at least once, then I take the failure of that technique to mean that it is not the right one for the problem at hand.
This fixes the threshold issue: a guru with only one technique must assert that his students are lacking in faith or not doing it right. One with a toolbox can say, “well, I’ve seen you use the screwdriver successfully before, and you’re doing all the steps correctly now, so it must not be the right tool for the job. Let’s find something else.”
Regardless of the cause, I’d be interested to see how keeping logs of key goals correlated with the effectiveness of self-help techniques in general.
Faster feedback improves things faster. If you want to know if something’s changed, you want to know right away. I’ve always found this quote from “Using Your Brain For A Change” quite insipring:
A mathematician doesn’t just get an answer and say, “OK, I’m done.” He tests his answers carefully, because if he doesn’t, other mathematicians will! That kind of rigor has always been missing from therapy and education. People try something and then do a two-year follow-up study to find out if it worked or not. If you test rigorously, you can find out what a technique works for and what it doesn’t work for, and you can find out right away. And where you find out that it doesn’t work, you need to try some other technology
The problem is that both self-help and psychology fail to aim this high. And I’m as frustrated with it in my way, as Eliezer is in his about the harder sciences failing to aim equally high. I agree with “you should be able to have an insight in fifteen minutes”, and say, you should be able to test your insight in fifteen minutes, if it’s your own behavior you’re talking about.
I agree with what you are saying except would suggest a qualifier for:
I agree with “you should be able to have an insight in fifteen minutes”, and say, you should be able to test your insight in fifteen minutes, if it’s your own behavior you’re talking about.
I think in particular of insights involving, say, the influence of programs that targeting the development of the cerebellum and the effect they could have on akrasia problems. Theories that require changing the brain can not all be tested in 15 minutes.
Theories that require changing the brain can not all be tested in 15 minutes.
Which is why I prefer not to investigate such things, when there are so many things that do work in such a time frame, once you’ve defined what you’re trying to do, and identified what to apply them to.
But I’m referring here to things that involve creating a “click” to learn or unlearn something, rather than developing skill.
Not every methodologist is like this; I’m insistent upon tests, because I don’t want people wasting time on stuff that doesn’t work. It’s too discouraging—for me as well as them!
I have observed that there are different types of processes people use that require different means to change. If you use the wrong tool for the job, the thing simply won’t change, no matter how many times you do it. So, as long as I know that somebody has successfully used a given tool at least once, then I take the failure of that technique to mean that it is not the right one for the problem at hand.
This fixes the threshold issue: a guru with only one technique must assert that his students are lacking in faith or not doing it right. One with a toolbox can say, “well, I’ve seen you use the screwdriver successfully before, and you’re doing all the steps correctly now, so it must not be the right tool for the job. Let’s find something else.”
Faster feedback improves things faster. If you want to know if something’s changed, you want to know right away. I’ve always found this quote from “Using Your Brain For A Change” quite insipring:
The problem is that both self-help and psychology fail to aim this high. And I’m as frustrated with it in my way, as Eliezer is in his about the harder sciences failing to aim equally high. I agree with “you should be able to have an insight in fifteen minutes”, and say, you should be able to test your insight in fifteen minutes, if it’s your own behavior you’re talking about.
If you can’t, you’re probably just confabulating.
I agree with what you are saying except would suggest a qualifier for:
I think in particular of insights involving, say, the influence of programs that targeting the development of the cerebellum and the effect they could have on akrasia problems. Theories that require changing the brain can not all be tested in 15 minutes.
Which is why I prefer not to investigate such things, when there are so many things that do work in such a time frame, once you’ve defined what you’re trying to do, and identified what to apply them to.
But I’m referring here to things that involve creating a “click” to learn or unlearn something, rather than developing skill.