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NancyLebovitz comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong
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It might be worth taking a look at Karen Horney's work. She was an early psychoanalyst who wrote that if a child is abused, neglected, or has normal developmental stages overly interfered with, they are at risk of concluding that just being a human being isn't good enough, and will invent inhuman standards for themselves.
I'm working on understanding the implications (how do you get living as a human being right? :-/ ), but I think she was on to something.
I wasn't abused or neglected. Did she check experimentally that abuse or neglect is more prevalent among rationalists than in the general population?
Of course that's not something a human would ordinarily do to check a plausible-sounding hypothesis, so I guess she probably didn't, unless something went horribly wrong in her childhood.
Second thought: Maybe I should have not mentioned her theory about why people adopt inhuman standards, and just focused on the idea that inhuman standards are likely to backfire, Viliam_Bur did.
Also-- if I reread I'll check this-- I think Horney focused on inhuman standards of already having a quality, which is not quite the same thing as having inhuman standards about what one ought to achieve, though I think they're related.
I was thinking about prase in particular, who sounds as though he might have some problems with applying high standards in a way that's bad for him.
Horney died in 1952, so she might not have had access to rationalists in your sense of the word.
When I said it might be worth taking a look at Horney's work, I really did mean I thought it might be worth exploring, not that I'm very sure it applies. It seems to be of some use for me.
To be clear, I don't have problems with applying high standards to myself, unless not wishing to apply such standards qualifies as a problem. However I am far more willing to consider myself an altruist (and perhaps behave accordingly) when other people don't constantly remind me that it's my moral obligation.
Thanks for the explanation, and my apologies for jumping to conclusions.
I've been wondering why cheerleading sometimes damages motivation-- there's certainly a big risk of it damaging mine. The other half would be why cheerleading sometimes works, and what the differences are between when it works and when it doesn't.
At least for me, I tend to interpret cheerleading as "Let me take you over for my purposes. This project probably isn't worth it for you, that's why I'm pushing you into it instead of letting you see its value for yourself." with a side order of "You're too stupid to know what's valuable, that's why you have to be pushed."
I'm not sure what cheerleading feels like to people who like it.
No need to apologise.
The feeling of being forced to pursue someone else's goals is certainly part of it. But even if the goals align, being pushed usually means that one's good deeds aren't going to be fully appreciated by others, which too is a great demotivator.
I think the feeling that one's good deeds will be unappreciated is especially a risk for altruism.