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Alicorn comments on Outward Change Drives Inward Change - Less Wrong
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Can you give some examples of behavior that is unnecessary in this way?
A typical example is people who were trained to always clear their plate of food rather than waste it; if you've eaten your fill you don't need to keep eating.
Another common one is an excessive focus on tidiness--putting random objects back in place isn't all that necessary, especially for things that you're likely to be using again soon. Right now I have some papers and a few books sitting out on my desk--I don't need to put them away right now, because it would serve no apparent goal that I value, but I've known individuals who wouldn't leave anything sitting out for more than a couple hours if it wasn't being actively used.
There are programs for behavior modification that attempt to optimize your cleaning/tidying time for you which recommend exactly this behavior. (My girlfriend did this for awhile.) It reduces one's need for lengthy cleanup sessions. So some of the people you observe doing this are serving a conscious goal.
Clearing one's plate may well be an optimization for populations that experience famine. In the US, there's little utility. In Houston, Texas doing this when eating out will almost certainly result in overeating.
The issue is not whether it's a good way to tidy, it's whether keeping things tidy is actually a deliberate goal vs. a trained behavior or perceived obligation.
If it is a deliberate goal that's fine, but orthogonal to my point.
Perhaps it's orthogonal to your point, but it calls to question one of your examples. The other one seems quite solid.