LESSWRONG
LW

All of Vilx-'s Comments + Replies

Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014)
Vilx-00

Hmm... I've given it some thought (more to come later, for sure), but there's already one thing I've found this theory useful for. There have been times when I've caught myself doing/desiring things that I should not do/desire. I then asked myself the question - so why do I do/desire this thing? What pleasure/pain motivates me here? Answers to these questions were not immediately available, but after some time doing introspection, I've come up with them. After that it was a simple matter of changing these motivators to rid myself of the unwanted behavior.

S... (read more)

Reply
1Viliam_Bur
What you describe as "simple" here, is extremely difficult for me. (There are many possible explanations for why it is so, and I am not sure which one of them is the correct one.) Generally what you described seems like a part of the correct explanation... but there are other parts, such as biology, environment, etc. For example, if my goal is to exercise regularly, I should a) think about my goals, imagine the consequences, think about the costs, and solve the internal conflicts... but also b) do some strategic activities, such as find where the nearest gym is, or maybe buy some exercise equipment to home, and c) check my health to see there is no biological problem such as e.g. anemia making me chronically tired.
0TommiH
An alternative explanation I can think of is the placebo effect. It's possible that your behaviour Y changed after changing X, because you believed behaviour Y would change. Especially as you wanted to change those behaviours in the first place. Also, even if this was not due to placebo effect, it's only evidence on how your mind works. Other people's minds might work differently. (And I suspect it's also quite weak as evidence goes, though I can't seem to articulate why I think so. At the very least I think you'd need a very big sample size of behaviour changes, without forgetting to consider also the failed attempts at changing your behaviour.)
Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014)
Vilx-30

Ahh, I see. Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for! :) Back to thinking. :)

Reply
Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014)
Vilx-30

Hello folks! I'm new to your site here and still trying to get my bearings. :) The navigation is pretty nonstandard, hence somewhat confusing to me. I found this website from a link my friend posted on a Facebook discussion we had. Since then I've got one question that keeps bugging me, so I decided to ask it here. As I understand, this thread (is this the equivalent of a forum thread?) is a good place to do it. :)

The question is this: I've got a theory which seems (to me) so simple and obvious and able to explain all human behavior that I'm surprised that... (read more)

Reply
Viliam_Bur100

Welcome!

Short introduction to navigation: Clicking the "Discussion" link at the top of the page will show you (most of) the new articles. If you write comments there, you are most likely to receive replies.

If there is something called "Open Thread", that pretty much means: feel free to ask or say anything (as long as it is at least somewhat relevant to this website, but even that is not always necessary). Also, posting in the most recent open thread will give you more visitors and thus more replies than posting in a three months old art... (read more)

Reply