Being an eye witness of your own motives and growing-up is a tough exercise to conclude accurately.

I believe that it would be of no help in the mentioned discussions. It is rather inherent, something neurological.

I grew up in a very religious environment. Any significance, my goals, were mainly set to focus on being a good Christian. Although I assume it never reached my 'inner self', I consciously tried to motivate myself to reach this particular goal due to fear of dying. But on a rather unconscious level it never worked, this goal has always been ineffectual.

At the age of 13, my decision to become vegetarian changed everything. With all my heart I came to the conclusion that something is wrong about all the pain and suffering. A sense for human suffering was still effectively dimmed, due to a whole life of indoctrination telling me that our pain is our own fault. But what about the animals? Why would an all-loving God design the universe this way? To cut a long story short, still believing, it made me abandon this God. With the onset of the Internet here in Germany I then learnt that there was nothing to abandon in the first place...I guess I won't have to go into details here.

Anyway, that was just one of the things that changed. I'm really bad when it comes to social things. Thus I suffered a lot in school, it wasn't easy. Those problems with other kids, a lack of concentration and that I always found the given explanations counterintuitive and hard to follow, dimmed any motivation to learn more. All these problems rather caused me to associate education with torture, I wanted it to end. Though curiosity was always a part of my character. I've probably been the only kid who liked to watch documentations and news at an early age.

Then there is the mental side I mentioned at the beginning. These are probably the most important reasons for all that happened and happens in my life. I got quite a few ticks and psychic problems. When I was a kid I was suffering from Tourette syndrome, which didn't help in school either. But many other urges are still prevalent. I pretty much have to consciously think about a lot that other people might just do and decide upon unconsciously. Like sleeping, I pretty much have to tell me each time why there are more reasons to sleep now than in favor of further evaluation. Or how, when and about what do I start to think, when do I stop and decide. How do I set the threshold? For me it is inherently very low, the slightest stimulus triggers a high tide of possibilities. Like when you look up some article on Wikipedia, you can click through forever. There is much more...I hope you see what I mean by mental problems.

I could refine the above or go on for long. I will just stop now. You see, my motivation is complex and pretty much based on my mental problems and curiosity. I love playing games, but I cannot push myself to play more than a few minutes. Then there's this fear and urge to think of what else is there, what I could be missing and what could happen if I just enjoy playing this game. I have to do it...I'm not strong enough not to care. Take this reply as an example, I really had to push myself to answer but also had an urge to write it. It's a pain. Though now the fear of how much time it takes up and what else I could do grew stronger.

Bottom line is that my motivation is a mixture of curiosity, inclination, mental problems, my youth, relieve, not staying dumb, fear of being wrong again about the nature of reality and so on. Really, the only problem I have with learning programming right now is that there are so many other problems in my head, not my 'motivation'. I often don't find the time to read more than one page in a book per day.

I'm sorry if this post sounds a bit confused, not having the best day today. Also just ask if you have further questions. I should probably think about it a bit more thoroughly anyway. But now you have some idea. I hope...

P.S. Another milestone that changed everything was discovering Orion's Arm. It was so awesome, I just had to learn more. That basicaly led me to get into science, transhumanism and later OB/LW.