pjeby 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: Louie 15 September 2010 02:37:18AM 3 points [-]

Wait. You're claiming that the goals chosen by your executive function just happen to correspond to a succession of enjoyable activities for the rest of your brain? I know there's a lot of diversity in brain-space, but there's not so much that you couldn't find 100,000+ people with a nearly identical motivational system. What if I'm one of them? If so, I'll gladly pay you $500/mo for the privilege of doing all your fun work... and will successfully complete all your goals as a by-product! Boom! Win-Win! Then you can free yourself up to do something more high-value. And if your next goal turns out to be as fun and exciting, Boom!! -- you can do it again and get another customer like me to pay you for the pleasure of taking on all that work too.

If your work is always fun, you have either

a) Aimed so low in life that referring to what you do as "having goals" is laughable

or

b) Deluded yourself that your work = enjoyable for signaling and/or motivational reasons

FACT: The #1 trait of effective people is being able to consistently do things they don't want to do.

Not all of your work should be awful, but if a non-trivial part of what you do isn't boring or stressful, then your goals would already be fulfilled by others. And if other people fulfilling your goals doesn't work for your particular goals, consider the possibility that what you have are not goals, but simply desires.

Comment author: pjeby 15 September 2010 03:10:51AM 3 points [-]

Wait. You're claiming that the goals chosen by your executive function just happen to correspond to a succession of enjoyable activities for the rest of your brain?

Nope. See my second comment, here for a better explanation of "love" in this context.

if a non-trivial part of what you do isn't boring or stressful,

If it were impossible to love something boring or stressful, a lot of relationships would be in jeopardy. ;-)