Actively look out for the flinch, preferably when you are in a motivationally "high" state. Better still, do this when you are both motivationally high, not under time pressure, and when you are undertaking an overview of your life.

Thanks for the link. You're right about this being an "ugh field" for me, something I usually flinch from even thinking about. I think my doubts about Christianity used to be an "ugh field" too, but I feel a lot better for having confronted them.

Two big reasons seem to be a) "it's too difficult/unlikely that I succeed" and b) akrasia.

Those seem to apply to me too. I'd never heard of akrasia before, what a great word. If I investigate this further among the LW community, I'll let you know.

Thanks so much for your thorough reply. I really, really appreciate it! Answers to your questions:

• You're right. This is an incredibly difficult question. Based on the sample human terminal goals given, I think the biggest for me are health, joy, and curiosity. Can environmentalism be a terminal goal? What about efficiency in general?

• My impulse to do ambitious things is about a 2 out of 10, so not very strong at all, and very manageable, currently. It used to be more like a 1 though, so the current trend seems to be that the older I get, the more attractive a life of accomplishment looks.

• How happy would I be not pursuing ambition? You're right; I'm super happy right now. I have absolutely no idea if this happiness with a leisurely lifestyle is something I can maintain or not. My dad and his best friend are both super smart and not very ambitious, and seem to be quite happy even as they approach their 50's, which makes me think I could stay very happy. Then again, I might be different. Maybe my lack of ambition was just from the way I was raised (in my family, we all bragged about acing tests with no outside study, about never having homework, about never doing assigned readings, about skipping class to hang out in the rec room, etc.. kinda pathetic, in hindsight).

• How big an impact would I have? If I knew this, things would be lots less fuzzy! One goal that I'd love to pursue would be promoting hitchhiking/slugging. This has to do with my other values of environmentalism and efficiency. I also think it would be wonderful if people were less fearful of strangers. I'm not sure how exactly I'd work toward this goal, so it's really hard to gauge potential impact. If it were successful though, traffic would be decongested, carbon emissions would be decreased, and people would save money on transportation and have more opportunities to interact with new people... so yeah, it could potentially have a significant impact.

• Probability of success? Good question. No idea, again this is very fuzzy since I don't even know where I would start; it's just not something I've thought about much. I'd probably have to find someone to team up with who has more concrete skills. All I have is a general idea and a pretty logical mind, no relevant experience or education. I am usually pretty confident and anything I think I can do, I can do, but I normally don't set my sights too high.

• How altruistic am I, really? I don't know. I'm still going through the repercussions of my deconversion. Right now, the amount of caring I have for people in the world is relative to the amount I used to have as a Christian. Now that eternity/an afterlife is out of the picture for me, I'm a little less frantic about saving the world and more content doing my own thing. Still, I think I care enough that if I were pursue a big goal or career, altruism would be my chief motivation.

• The selfish reasons to be ambitious are significant too, I guess. Currently, I'm so happy with my leisurely life, it's hard to remember back to times when I had accomplishments, like academic awards and track and field records. Money I don't care about so much, but accomplishments feel really great, whether it's because of the personal satisfaction or the praise, it's hard to tell. I'm fairly confident that ambition would never be poison for me. The accomplishments I've had in life felt great, but they were really just side benefits of me pursuing other terminal goals, and as great as they were, they didn't give rise to any ambition.

  This was a good analysis; thank you! You're right that I really should put proportional thought into this.

Hmm, I'm not particularly well read in philosophy either, but I hear the term "moral relativism" thrown around a lot; mostly as a result of sharing my deconversion story actually, as a lot of people have commented that atheists almost have no choice but to be moral relativists. I think "moral relativism" is pretty simple and just means there is no "right" or "wrong" outside of an individual, and I think it's consistent with your views, but I'm not totally sure.

I wouldn't say so. The way I think of it is "less bad at achieving your ends".

Haha, okay, I hear you. Actually as soon as I typed that sentence, I realized this would be your response. It's just a different definition of "wrong" than I'm used to, but it makes sense.

My impression is that the community does have some "soft spots", and not wanting to believe in moral relativism sort of seems like it's one of them (based on what I remember when I read through the metaethics stuff.

Yeah. I think this is another topic that probably deserves more discussion among the community than it currently gets. If our society gets to be extremely rational (which I think most people here strongly desire), it will be really hard to draw the line between individual freedom and what's best for the future of humanity, and I think this is something worth serious thought.

Yeah, I get the same feeling about an anti-religion bias here. Your post about an afterlife is interesting. We really have no reason to believe in one, but without data, I definitely don't think people should assign near-certain probability to the non-existence of an afterlife, either. I guess I'm more of an agnostic, too. I don't believe in the Christian God, but like I said in my very first post, I can't be sure there isn't a good god or gods struggling against an evil god out there somewhere. It is possible, I just have no reason to believe it's true, so I don't really think about it.

Maybe there's a subconscious tendency to go along with the mainstream views on LW just because almost everyone here is so good at thinking and rational people usually tend to agree with other rational people. Personally, I discovered this site and thought, wow! So many people who think SO similarly to me, only they've been thinking much harder and for much longer... the general ideas around here must represent the most rational and least biased opinions on any topic. It's tempting to just trust that the ideas around here are all things I can agree with and understand, just because I've agreed with almost everything I've read so far.... I guess I just have to be cautious, keep putting in the effort of thinking for myself, and remember that LW is a (wonderful) resource, not a bible.