I can work extremely hard, doing things I don’t particularly like, without burnouts, eat only healthy food without binge eating spirals, honestly enjoy doing exercises, have only meaningful rest without exausting my will power and generally be fully intellectually and emotionally consistent, completely subjugating my urges to my values...
is called the least convinient possible world—says something interesting about this whole discourse.
Honestly, the world where I’m already a god sounds extremely convinient. And pretending that we are there, demanding that we have to be there, claiming that we could’ve been there already if only I just tried harder doesn’t sound helpful at all. Yes it’s important to try to get there. One step at a time. Check whether it’s possible to go faster occasionally, while being nice and careful towards yourself. But as soon as you find yourself actually having a voice in your head being mean to you because your are not as good as you wish to be, it seems that you’ve failed the nice and careful part.
If I could work extremely hard doing things I don’t like, without any burnouts, eat only healthy food without binge eating spirals, honestly enjoy doing exercises, have only meaningful rest without exausting my will power and generally be fully intellectually and emotionally consistent, completely subjugating my urges to my values… but ONLY by being really mean and cruel and careless to myself...
Man, that would suck! That would be a really inconvenient world! That would be a world where I’m forced to choose either “I don’t want to be mean to myself, even if I could save lots of people’s lives by doing that, so I’m just going to deliberately leave all those people to die” or “I’m going to be mean to myself because I think it’s ethically obligatory”, and I really don’t want to make that choice!
I much prefer a world where a choice like “I’m going to be nice and careful to myself because actually that’s the best way to be more productive, and being mean isn’t sustainable” is an option on the table. Way more convenient. I really hope it’s the one we live in.
I mean if you have successfully subjugated your urges to your values, thus you actually enjoy your new lifestyle thus you are not mean to yourself anymore and it’s very convinient...
But, yeah, we can spin the inconvinience framework however we (don’t) like. That’s because reality doesn’t actually run on inconvinience and this kind of speculation is rarely helpful. Saying that we believe X because it’s convinient is easy because one can always find a framework according to which believing X is convinient and always demand attempts to find new clever solutions around all the objective reasons why X seems to be true. Let’s go one step highter:
Carol: Hey, Alice, I’ve noticed that you spend couple of hours a day meditating instead of taking extra work and thus earning more money and donating them to charity. Don’t you think hat you are being hypocritical and not consistent with your values?
Alice: Actually meditating is what helps me to keep my lifestyle at all. I do it specifically in order to be more productive.
Carol: Oh, how very convinient that the only way for you to be somewhat productive is to spend couple of hours a day doing nothing and not, say, self-flagelation. Have you actually tried to find a clever solution around this problem or just stopped as soon as you figured out a nice way, instead of actually efficient one?
The thing is, perceiving Alice (or Carol) as speaking the hard truths and Bob as a laizy motivated reasoner is wrong. Both of them are motivated reasoners! Both of them are rationalizing for their own convinience and both of them capture something true about the reality. And both of them are probably voices in your head. Sometimes you need to side more with Alice and sometimes with Bob. Finding the right balance is the difficult thing. But if you always find yourself as if you are Bob, who is defending themself against Alice—then something seems to be not working as it should.
Well, yes. The correct response to noticing “it’s really convenient to believe X, so I might be biased towards X” isn’t to immediately believe not-X. It’s to be extra careful to use evidence and good reasoning to figure out whether you believe X or not-X.
I think the fact that the world where:
I can work extremely hard, doing things I don’t particularly like, without burnouts, eat only healthy food without binge eating spirals, honestly enjoy doing exercises, have only meaningful rest without exausting my will power and generally be fully intellectually and emotionally consistent, completely subjugating my urges to my values...
is called the least convinient possible world—says something interesting about this whole discourse.
Honestly, the world where I’m already a god sounds extremely convinient. And pretending that we are there, demanding that we have to be there, claiming that we could’ve been there already if only I just tried harder doesn’t sound helpful at all. Yes it’s important to try to get there. One step at a time. Check whether it’s possible to go faster occasionally, while being nice and careful towards yourself. But as soon as you find yourself actually having a voice in your head being mean to you because your are not as good as you wish to be, it seems that you’ve failed the nice and careful part.
If I could work extremely hard doing things I don’t like, without any burnouts, eat only healthy food without binge eating spirals, honestly enjoy doing exercises, have only meaningful rest without exausting my will power and generally be fully intellectually and emotionally consistent, completely subjugating my urges to my values… but ONLY by being really mean and cruel and careless to myself...
Man, that would suck! That would be a really inconvenient world! That would be a world where I’m forced to choose either “I don’t want to be mean to myself, even if I could save lots of people’s lives by doing that, so I’m just going to deliberately leave all those people to die” or “I’m going to be mean to myself because I think it’s ethically obligatory”, and I really don’t want to make that choice!
I much prefer a world where a choice like “I’m going to be nice and careful to myself because actually that’s the best way to be more productive, and being mean isn’t sustainable” is an option on the table. Way more convenient. I really hope it’s the one we live in.
I mean if you have successfully subjugated your urges to your values, thus you actually enjoy your new lifestyle thus you are not mean to yourself anymore and it’s very convinient...
But, yeah, we can spin the inconvinience framework however we (don’t) like. That’s because reality doesn’t actually run on inconvinience and this kind of speculation is rarely helpful. Saying that we believe X because it’s convinient is easy because one can always find a framework according to which believing X is convinient and always demand attempts to find new clever solutions around all the objective reasons why X seems to be true. Let’s go one step highter:
Carol: Hey, Alice, I’ve noticed that you spend couple of hours a day meditating instead of taking extra work and thus earning more money and donating them to charity. Don’t you think hat you are being hypocritical and not consistent with your values?
Alice: Actually meditating is what helps me to keep my lifestyle at all. I do it specifically in order to be more productive.
Carol: Oh, how very convinient that the only way for you to be somewhat productive is to spend couple of hours a day doing nothing and not, say, self-flagelation. Have you actually tried to find a clever solution around this problem or just stopped as soon as you figured out a nice way, instead of actually efficient one?
The thing is, perceiving Alice (or Carol) as speaking the hard truths and Bob as a laizy motivated reasoner is wrong. Both of them are motivated reasoners! Both of them are rationalizing for their own convinience and both of them capture something true about the reality. And both of them are probably voices in your head. Sometimes you need to side more with Alice and sometimes with Bob. Finding the right balance is the difficult thing. But if you always find yourself as if you are Bob, who is defending themself against Alice—then something seems to be not working as it should.
Well, yes. The correct response to noticing “it’s really convenient to believe X, so I might be biased towards X” isn’t to immediately believe not-X. It’s to be extra careful to use evidence and good reasoning to figure out whether you believe X or not-X.