What’s the payout of this model? I’m highly skeptical of any metaphor from Ayn Rand, so drawing comparisons to her ideas doesn’t add any insight for me. If I’m just not that target audience, that’s cool.
Thanks for asking. The toy model of “living money”, and the one about willpower/burnout, are meant to appeal to people who don’t necessarily put credibility in Rand; I’m trying to have the models speak for themselves; so you probably *are* in my target audience. (I only mentioned Rand because it’s good to credit models’ originators when using their work.)
Re: what the payout is:
This model suggests what kind of thing an “ego with willpower” is — where it comes from, how it keeps in existence:
By way of analogy: a squirrel is a being who turns acorns into poop, in such a way as to be able to do more and more acorn-harvesting (via using the first acorns’-energy to accumulate fat reserves and knowledge of where acorns are located).
An “ego with willpower”, on this model, is a ~being who turns “reputation with one’s visceral processes” into actions, in such a way as to be able to garner more and more “reputation with one’s visceral processes” over time. (Via learning how to nourish viscera, and making many good predictions.)
I find this a useful model.
One way it’s useful:
IME, many people think they get willpower by magic (unrelated to their choices, surroundings, etc., although maybe related to sleep/food/physiology), and should use their willpower for whatever some abstract system tells them is virtuous.
I think this is a bad model (makes inaccurate predictions in areas that matter; leads people to have low capacity unnecessarily).
The model in the OP, by contrast, suggests that it’s good to take an interest in which actions produce something you can viscerally perceive as meaningful/rewarding/good, if you want to be able to motivate yourself to take actions.
(IME this model works better than does trying to think in terms of physiology solely, and is non-obvious to some set of people who come to me wondering what part of their machine is broken-or-something such that they are burnt out.)
(Though FWIW, IME physiology and other basic aspects of well-being also has important impacts, and food/sleep/exercise/sunlight/friends are also worth attending to.)
Thanks for clarifying! Willpower is a tricky concept.
I’ve suffered from depression at times, where getting out of bed felt like a huge exertion of emotional energy. Due to my tenuous control over my focus with ADHD, I often have to repeat in my head what I’m doing so I don’t forget in the middle of it. I’ve also put in 60-hour weeks writing code, both because I’ve had serious deadlines, but also because time disappeared as I got so wrapped up in it. I’ve stayed on healthy diets for years without problem, and had times where slipped back to high sugar foods.
All of these are examples of what people refer to as willpower (or lack there-of). Most of them are from times in my life where I haven’t felt really in control. This is especially true regarding memory. It’s not uncommon for me to realize as I am putting my groceries away that I didn’t get the one item I really needed (and have to go back).
That said, I’m pretty good at grit: I’m willing to put in the work, despite hardships and obstacles. I’m also good at leading by example. I’ll fight the good fight, when needed,
All of these different features of me and my brain, are wrapped up in the concept of willpower. Each of them are a mixture of conscious and unconscious patterns of behavior (including cognitive).
It’s this distinction that makes me look askance at the concept of willpower. It’s too wrapped up in moral judgement.
I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until after my son was. I lived with a lot guilt and shame because I interpreted the things I struggled with as a moral failings, because I just lacked the willpower.
Then I saw how many people struggled with the same sorts of things I did. It was really weird learning that so many things I previously would have described as negative personality traits of mine, turned out to be what happens when someone has this quirk in their brain that me and my son have.
Now, I don’t carry that guilt. Now, I know that despite my best efforts, tools, and practices, there are things I’m just going to always struggle with that neurotypical find easy, and that’s okay. Now, I don’t see myself as having low willpower because of them. Now, I better understand the quirks of my brain, and I am better equipped to mitigate my weaknesses, and play into my strengths.
Now, I’m a lot happier and confident. I wish it hadn’t taken 40 years for me to figure things out, but I’m glad my son is free of that shame and guilt.
I feel pretty lucky: when I was a kid, I had knack for patterns and abstraction, a fascination with computers, a family that could actually afford one, and people who could help me when I was stuck, I managed to make my hobby into my profession, and still enjoy it as a hobby.
I totally agree that joy and meaning are a balm to burnout. That and vacations; take more vacations.
I guess what I’m saying is be careful to not stretch your metaphors too far, as the details are messy; however, if it helps you to remember to take care of yourself, find joy, and seek meaning, I’m all for it.
If you have problems with willpower, maybe you should make your predictions explicit whenever you try to use it. I mean, as a rationalist, you are already trying to be better calibrated, so you could leverage the same mechanism into supporting your willpower. If you predict a 90% success of some action, and you know that you are right, in theory you should feel small resistance. And if you predict a 10% success, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it? And it helps you to be honest to yourself.
(This has a serious problem, though. Sometimes the things with 10% chance of success are worth doing, if the cost is small and the potential gain large enough. Maybe in such cases you should reframe it somehow. Either bet on large numbers “if I keep doing X every day, I will succeed within a month”, or bet on some different outcome “if I start a new company, there is a 10% chance of financial success, and a 90% chance that it will make a cool story to impress my friends”.)
This also suggests that it is futile to use willpower in situations where you have little autonomy. If you try hard, and then an external influence ruins all your plans, and this was all entirely predictable, you just burned your internal credibility.
(Again, sometimes you need at least to keep the appearance of trying hard, even if you have little control over the outcome. For example, you have a job where the boss overrides all your decisions and thereby ruins the projects, but you still need the money and can’t afford to get fired. It could help to reframe, to make the bet about the part that is under your control. Such as “if I try, I can make this code work, and I will feel good about being competent”, even if later I am told to throw the code away because the requirements have changed again.)
This also reminds me about “goals vs systems”. If you think about a goal you want to achieve, then every day (except for maybe the last one) is the day when you are not there yet; i.e. almost every day is a failure. Instead, if you think about a system you want to follow, then every day you have followed the system successfully is a success. Which suggests that willpower will work better if you aim it at following a system, and stop thinking about the goal. (You need to think about the goal when you set up the system, but then you should stop thinking about it and only focus on the system.)
The strategy of “success spiral” could be interpreted as a way to get your credibility back. Make many small attempts, achieve many small successes, then attempt gradually larger things. (The financial analogy is that when you are poor, you need to do business that does not require large upfront investments, and gradually accumulate capital for larger projects.)
What’s the payout of this model? I’m highly skeptical of any metaphor from Ayn Rand, so drawing comparisons to her ideas doesn’t add any insight for me. If I’m just not that target audience, that’s cool.
Thanks for asking. The toy model of “living money”, and the one about willpower/burnout, are meant to appeal to people who don’t necessarily put credibility in Rand; I’m trying to have the models speak for themselves; so you probably *are* in my target audience. (I only mentioned Rand because it’s good to credit models’ originators when using their work.)
Re: what the payout is:
This model suggests what kind of thing an “ego with willpower” is — where it comes from, how it keeps in existence:
By way of analogy: a squirrel is a being who turns acorns into poop, in such a way as to be able to do more and more acorn-harvesting (via using the first acorns’-energy to accumulate fat reserves and knowledge of where acorns are located).
An “ego with willpower”, on this model, is a ~being who turns “reputation with one’s visceral processes” into actions, in such a way as to be able to garner more and more “reputation with one’s visceral processes” over time. (Via learning how to nourish viscera, and making many good predictions.)
I find this a useful model.
One way it’s useful:
IME, many people think they get willpower by magic (unrelated to their choices, surroundings, etc., although maybe related to sleep/food/physiology), and should use their willpower for whatever some abstract system tells them is virtuous.
I think this is a bad model (makes inaccurate predictions in areas that matter; leads people to have low capacity unnecessarily).
The model in the OP, by contrast, suggests that it’s good to take an interest in which actions produce something you can viscerally perceive as meaningful/rewarding/good, if you want to be able to motivate yourself to take actions.
(IME this model works better than does trying to think in terms of physiology solely, and is non-obvious to some set of people who come to me wondering what part of their machine is broken-or-something such that they are burnt out.)
(Though FWIW, IME physiology and other basic aspects of well-being also has important impacts, and food/sleep/exercise/sunlight/friends are also worth attending to.)
Thanks for clarifying! Willpower is a tricky concept.
I’ve suffered from depression at times, where getting out of bed felt like a huge exertion of emotional energy. Due to my tenuous control over my focus with ADHD, I often have to repeat in my head what I’m doing so I don’t forget in the middle of it. I’ve also put in 60-hour weeks writing code, both because I’ve had serious deadlines, but also because time disappeared as I got so wrapped up in it. I’ve stayed on healthy diets for years without problem, and had times where slipped back to high sugar foods.
All of these are examples of what people refer to as willpower (or lack there-of). Most of them are from times in my life where I haven’t felt really in control. This is especially true regarding memory. It’s not uncommon for me to realize as I am putting my groceries away that I didn’t get the one item I really needed (and have to go back).
That said, I’m pretty good at grit: I’m willing to put in the work, despite hardships and obstacles. I’m also good at leading by example. I’ll fight the good fight, when needed,
All of these different features of me and my brain, are wrapped up in the concept of willpower. Each of them are a mixture of conscious and unconscious patterns of behavior (including cognitive).
It’s this distinction that makes me look askance at the concept of willpower. It’s too wrapped up in moral judgement.
I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until after my son was. I lived with a lot guilt and shame because I interpreted the things I struggled with as a moral failings, because I just lacked the willpower.
Then I saw how many people struggled with the same sorts of things I did. It was really weird learning that so many things I previously would have described as negative personality traits of mine, turned out to be what happens when someone has this quirk in their brain that me and my son have.
Now, I don’t carry that guilt. Now, I know that despite my best efforts, tools, and practices, there are things I’m just going to always struggle with that neurotypical find easy, and that’s okay. Now, I don’t see myself as having low willpower because of them. Now, I better understand the quirks of my brain, and I am better equipped to mitigate my weaknesses, and play into my strengths.
Now, I’m a lot happier and confident. I wish it hadn’t taken 40 years for me to figure things out, but I’m glad my son is free of that shame and guilt.
I feel pretty lucky: when I was a kid, I had knack for patterns and abstraction, a fascination with computers, a family that could actually afford one, and people who could help me when I was stuck, I managed to make my hobby into my profession, and still enjoy it as a hobby.
I totally agree that joy and meaning are a balm to burnout. That and vacations; take more vacations.
I guess what I’m saying is be careful to not stretch your metaphors too far, as the details are messy; however, if it helps you to remember to take care of yourself, find joy, and seek meaning, I’m all for it.
Just some quick guesses:
If you have problems with willpower, maybe you should make your predictions explicit whenever you try to use it. I mean, as a rationalist, you are already trying to be better calibrated, so you could leverage the same mechanism into supporting your willpower. If you predict a 90% success of some action, and you know that you are right, in theory you should feel small resistance. And if you predict a 10% success, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it? And it helps you to be honest to yourself.
(This has a serious problem, though. Sometimes the things with 10% chance of success are worth doing, if the cost is small and the potential gain large enough. Maybe in such cases you should reframe it somehow. Either bet on large numbers “if I keep doing X every day, I will succeed within a month”, or bet on some different outcome “if I start a new company, there is a 10% chance of financial success, and a 90% chance that it will make a cool story to impress my friends”.)
This also suggests that it is futile to use willpower in situations where you have little autonomy. If you try hard, and then an external influence ruins all your plans, and this was all entirely predictable, you just burned your internal credibility.
(Again, sometimes you need at least to keep the appearance of trying hard, even if you have little control over the outcome. For example, you have a job where the boss overrides all your decisions and thereby ruins the projects, but you still need the money and can’t afford to get fired. It could help to reframe, to make the bet about the part that is under your control. Such as “if I try, I can make this code work, and I will feel good about being competent”, even if later I am told to throw the code away because the requirements have changed again.)
This also reminds me about “goals vs systems”. If you think about a goal you want to achieve, then every day (except for maybe the last one) is the day when you are not there yet; i.e. almost every day is a failure. Instead, if you think about a system you want to follow, then every day you have followed the system successfully is a success. Which suggests that willpower will work better if you aim it at following a system, and stop thinking about the goal. (You need to think about the goal when you set up the system, but then you should stop thinking about it and only focus on the system.)
The strategy of “success spiral” could be interpreted as a way to get your credibility back. Make many small attempts, achieve many small successes, then attempt gradually larger things. (The financial analogy is that when you are poor, you need to do business that does not require large upfront investments, and gradually accumulate capital for larger projects.)