epwripi comments on Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality - Less Wrong

105 Post author: patrissimo 14 September 2010 04:17PM

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Comment author: pjeby 14 September 2010 05:22:50PM 37 points [-]

forcing yourself to do what you know you ought to instead of what is fun & easy.

I had difficulty engaging with most of your article from this point on, because your premise seems to be that Work is hard and problematic and we must be forced to do it.

This premise is not just epistemically false: believing it has bad instrumental effects as well.

Ask anybody who's actually productive -- especially those who make a lot of money by being productive, and nearly all of them will tell you that they love their work. (The rest will probably say they love money, or prestige, or whatever other result their work gets for them.)

IOW, instrumental observation shows that the driving factor of high productivity is loving something more, not forcing yourself to do something you love less.

Comment author: epwripi 14 September 2010 05:56:17PM 3 points [-]

I had a similar thought on the distinction between "shiny/fun" versus "hard", but I still support the basic premise of the article. As it stands, I find LW valuable in a dual role... i.e. both for developing the right attitude towards self help and also as a "fun/shiny" thing. At the same time, I suppose there is a lot of scope for improvement with its role pertaining to the self help goals.