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 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.