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ZT5 comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Gondolinian 02 February 2015 12:28AM

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Comment author: MathiasZaman 02 February 2015 03:53:38PM *  1 point [-]

How would you respond if I said I'm a rationalist, however I don't feel a strong motivation to make the world a better place?

With just this information, I'd likely say that being an aspiring rationalist doesn't really have anything to do with your goals, as its mostly about methods of reaching your goals, rather than telling you what your goals should be.

Following it up with this:

To be clear, I do recognize making the world a better place a good thing, I just don't feel much intrinsic motivation to actually do it.

Confuses me a bit, however.

If one of your goals is making the world a better place (that's how I'd rephrase the statement: "I do recognize making the world a better place is a good thing," saying as saying things like "X is good" generally means "X is a desirable state of the world we should strive for), your intrinsic motivation shouldn't matter one bit.

I have little intrinsic motivation of eating healthy. Preparing food is boring to me and I don't particularly enjoy eating most healthy things. I still try to eat healthy, because one of my goals is living for a very, very long time.

I guess in part it's because I expect genuinely trying to improve things (rather than making a token effort) to be a rather difficult and thankless task.

One the one hand: How difficult is it to give 10% (or even 5 or 1 percent, if your income is very low) to an effective charity?

On the other hand: So fucking what? You know how the world becomes a better place? By people doing things that are difficult and thankless because those things need to be done. The world doesn't become a better place by people sitting around waiting for the brief moment of inspiration in which they sorta want to solve a local problem.

Part of the reason, I think, is that I don't see myself being able to do something I really don't enjoy for long enough that it produces meaningful results. So in order for it work, it pretty much has to be something I actually like doing.

This is one of the many reasons why effective altruism works. It allows you to contribute to big problems, while you're doing something you enjoy and are good at.

(Or we can wait for /u/blacktrance to come in and try to convince you that egoism is the right way to go.)

Comment author: ZT5 02 February 2015 06:02:57PM *  0 points [-]

If one of your goals is making the world a better place (that's how I'd rephrase the statement: "I do recognize making the world a better place is a good thing," saying as saying things like "X is good" generally means "X is a desirable state of the world we should strive for), your intrinsic motivation shouldn't matter one bit.

That's not exactly what I meant, but nevertheless this is a good point.

On the other hand: So fucking what? You know how the world becomes a better place? By people doing things that are difficult and thankless because those things need to be done. The world doesn't become a better place by people sitting around waiting for the brief moment of inspiration in which they sorta want to solve a local problem.

Ok, let's play this out.

As I already said, I have good reason to believe that "should-based" motivation wouldn't work for me.

So what I'm wondering is, am I allowed to say "due to the way my mind currently works I'm choosing to optimize X by not actively committing to doing X" without running into the "you're not trying hard enough" kind of argument?

Just because some people do things in a particular way doesn't mean I can or should to try and do things the same way. It may simply not work for me. This may include thinking in a certain way or having a particular mindset.

Comment author: MathiasZaman 02 February 2015 07:18:21PM 3 points [-]

So what I'm wondering is, am I allowed to say "due to the way my mind currently works I'm choosing to optimize X by not actively committing to doing X" without running into the "you're not trying hard enough" kind of argument?

I'd say yes, even if it would only be to prevent worse things.

To quote one of Yvain's recent posts:

The rationalist community tends to get a lot of high-scrupulosity people, people who tend to beat themselves up for not doing more than they are. It’s why I push giving 10% to charity, not as some kind of amazing stretch goal that we need to guilt people into doing, but as a crutch, a sort of “don’t worry, you’re still okay if you only give ten percent”. It’s why there’s so much emphasis on “heroic responsibility” and how you, yes you, have to solve all the world’s problems personally.

This might be a similar situation. If you choice is doing nothing vs doing something, doing something is pretty much always better. (Assuming you do useful things, but let's take that for granted for now.)

If you follow the standard Less Wrong interpretation of utilitarianism, you're pretty much never doing enough to improve the world. Of course no-one actually holds you to such unreasonable standards, because doing so would be pretty insane. If you tried to be a perfect utility maximizer, you'd end up paralyzed with decision fear, anxiety and/or depression and that doesn't get us anywhere at all.

Since I'm quoting people, here's a useful quote to have come out the tumblr rationalists:

[Considering yourself a bad person because utilitarianism] is like saying Usain Bolt is slow because he runs at such a tiny fraction of the speed of light.

To make that more specific to your own situation:

Maybe saying "Alright, I'll give 10% of my income and we call it that," doesn't work for you, for whatever reason. Of course you're allowed to figure out something else that does work for you. That's what rationality is all about. Reaching your goals, even if the standard approach doesn't work for me.

That being said, it might still be interesting to see if changing the way your mind works isn't easier. (It probably isn't, but just in case...) From what you describe, it sounds like a form of akrasia which you might be able to work around in other ways than a variant of planned procrastination

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