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buybuydandavis comments on Rationality versus Short Term Selves - Less Wrong
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That was the kind of thing I was getting at.
The flip side of the unreliable parent is the French Parent - I bought some book about French parenting as compared to US parenting to give to a friend. The basic thrust was that the parent, when it came to discipline, should be something like a force of nature. Sure, swift, serene, no bargaining, no upset. Caring, but imperturbable. This is the way it is. You do this, this happens. Gravity, with a hug.
Which leads me to a very disturbing thought. At first, I thought a test to differentiate trust in people versus self discipline was possible. Factor the person out of the marshmallow scenario, and see how the kids do.
But that doesn't really prove anything. What if trust is learned as a whole, when young? Your parents are a force of nature. They are the universe, when you're a baby. If they're capricious, unpredictable, and worse, malevolent, then that's your emotional estimate of the universe. It's not that you don't have self discipline, it's that you live in a malevolent, unpredictable universe that you rightly don't trust. Or so it seems to you.
It would be interesting to correlate parental behavior and one's picture of God. Maybe that feeling of God some people have is the psychic after image of how the universe, mainly through mom and dad, appeared to them when young.
Yes. People bring many aliefs from their childhood; predictability of the universe is probably one of them.
If your model says that one marshmallow is sure, but two marshmallows have probability smaller than 50%, then choosing one is better. If your model says that you cannot trust anything, including yourself, then following short-term pleasures is better than following long-term goals.
How can this model be fixed? It would probably require a long-term exposure to some undeniable regularity. Either living in a strict environment (school? prison?) or maintaining long-term records about something important.
I think an extended period of working with your hands helps. Do some projects where you're interacting with agentless reality. Garden. Build a fence. Fix your car. The fewer words involved, the better.