But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”?
Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life goals, that they wouldn’t achieve philosophical nor psychological satisfaction that they seek. Their mind has predicted the conclusion of their efforts, and the conclusion lies far below what they seek. Thus the mind desperately attempts to re-understand, re-configure, and re-model the world to achieve its goals.
But instead what is espoused by modern psychology and self-help is a kind of blind optimism or a horse blinders kind of approach to tending one’s mind. Most types of meditative studies also force this notion of blindness. Depression and anxiety and other “disorders” (whose classification from its onset is very unhelpful for its ideological integration into society as a valid problem to work through) most often happen to those who are sensitive, those who have surprisingly extensive models of the world, etc.
But it has become very fashionable in SV intelligentsia and the communities that drink the intelligence soup that trickles down from the SV community (like other cities of America or other America-directed tech communities) to treat the mind as a dumb system that did a poor job evolving to a modern environment (e.g. rationality movement). Instead of understanding the mind (and consequently the body) as a system and listening to whatever small traces your mind has left in its great attempt to solve really important problems for you, we just blind ourselves to faux goals that we may not even actually want.
Optimization for optimization’s sake is bad, but goal-seeking for goal-seeking’s sake may be a significantly worse and dangerous meme.
I disagree, perseverance is not the same as goal-seeking for goal seeking's sake, or at least, it doesn't have to be.
Twenty years ago I set a thirty year goal, literally bet my life on it. It wasn't until two years ago that I was reasonably sure it had a chance of success. I had to, and continue to basically give up everything, no one funds very long term research, so I had to learn to live on less than $200 a month. No healthcare, not being able to buy a new pair of glasses, only being able to buy clothes once a year or so. But I found a university who believed in my work, gave me an office and a flat on campus outside of Phnom Penh and the freedom to follow the project wherever it went. No salary, but it's been enough.
Perseverance is what keeps you sane, gets you up in the morning. It gets you through whatever is thrown at you. I have not had a happy or easy life, but it has been a life full of purpose. I have seen and done things that most people couldn't imagine, that has been, many times, too weird to be believable even as fiction.
Perseverance is a skill you practice every day for the rest of your life. But there are many small compensations. You find kindness and beauty and from time to time pleasure in unexpected places along the way.
With the university's help we will go to press with the first volume later this year, with a volume every year or so until it's finished on or about 2030. No one would willingly choose such a life, you fall into such things, and I was one of the stupid one's who took on such a ridiculously ambitious challenge. With a little luck I will live to see it through to the end.
So for some, purpose and perseverance, trump happiness and comfort and security. Though I admit I am likely and edge case.
I must say though, my wife and I sure as shit would like to live on a little more than $200 a month. :)
I think this is a definitional disagreement. If what you mean by perseverance is the skill you practice to keep yourself going (while overall aligned in the general direction), then yes, I am all for it. But often goal-seeking for goal-seeking’s sake is somewhat coerced on others in the name of virtue, perseverance, etc. The old advice of “do something, don’t just stand there” is the example I am talking about.
But if you have found what you want to do and have set a reasonably long goal (30 years is dedication), then yes humans are imperfect and there will be bits and pieces of motivation still missing. But not many are fortunate to have this goal arising from within.
I like the “shower thoughts” test. Are your goals what you think about in the shower? If yes, then that is probably what you want.
Other story in the same line is “if you are trying to start a startup and you get discouraged by someone and consider not, you probably weren’t meant to do it in the first place.” (Peter Graham I think)
You really can’t not have desires. You can have desires that you don’t want or invisible/preconscious desires, but strictly speaking a person can’t be more desirous (or, loosely, more passionate) than another. It’s like saying a piece of AI is half-invested into its utility function, it just doesn’t work like that.
Curious too. 30 years project with one printed volume a years looks like an encyclopedia.
@deerpig you could set up a Patreon or some sort of crowd funding. If a few people interested in your project give you few bucks here and there, it could have a big impact on your income.
I did some digging. He's the founder of the Chenla Institute, Center for Distributed Civilization. Also launching/launched Chenla FabLab.
His comment history suggests he's old-school, been around the block (China, Japan, Cambodia), has done work for SGI, and has an "Infinite Reality" machine at work (which is described as a "graphics supercomputer").
Also, better persevering in your own mania.. at least the wound is self inflicted. When you have to persevere for what society considers important, if that leads to nothing the grief is heavy.
Why did you set this goal? Could you have picked any random 30 year goal and been as happy or was this something that naturally spoke to you? Are you still excited by it?
Perseverance often leads to a type of pseudo-meditation. When you work very hard towards a goal such as weight loss through exercise, you have to focus on one thing, and this can be almost meditative. This is one reason people find things like running or swimming to be 'relaxing', even though they're also 'tiring'.
This only works if the feedback loop is closed - as in you see a trend line, correlation, something (anything) that allows you to see value in your perseverance.
If you get no feedback after years on end... watch out
There are too many religions that glorify martyrdom where destruction of self can be seen as a honorable end. This when coupled with these grit narratives, make for very scary things.
The internal dialog must be carefully tuned to a feedback system. And not just any feedback system, one of the individuals chasing (a is intentional). Without proper nurturing, one begins to lose the self - leading to many terrible things.
I mostly agree with what you have to you say. Clearly you have been through this and have gained a lot of wisdom along the way. We are all products of our environments and our goals arise from this. People who grow up in the Bay Area, or who read Hacker News, or who excel at STEM have "life goals" of running a startup. Some actually want that internally and others are just going through the motions. The latter will be miserable. It's also not something you can tough out and force on yourself. Either you want it or you don't, and that's a good thing! We are individuals after all.
Where I disagree is that depression is caused by us being misaligned internally. Anybody who has been there knows that the brain can hijack your perception of the world. When you are depressed everything sucks. We live in an unexplainable universe with billions of assholes and we are all going to die so what's the point of anything? Nihilism takes over. You get more depressed. But once the fog lifts you can find the joy in life and appreciate all the stuff your "rational" depressed self thought was pointless.
From my experience I think its best to not make these grand sweeping life goals in the first place. Take it day by and keep moving forward. What excites you today? What do you daydream about when you are in the shower? People who achieve these "great goals" do so via naturally gained momentum and almost nobody has a life goal that lasts for decades. You start with something, see if you like it, if you do keep that momentum rolling. It should be more natural, feel good, and not be contrived. Be easy on yourself and enjoy the ride. You don't have to be Steve Jobs and even he wasn't trying to be Steve Jobs. He just got the momentum going and kept with it. If it happens so be it but if you are miserable you are doing it wrong.
I've spent a great deal of time and energy trying to set meaningful goals and progress towards things, then worry that I was progressing to the wrong thing and adjust goals etc.
My current goal is simply to learn to be happy with what I have and who I am.
As an indirect result of pursuing this I've found that loads of other goals and things that I've wanted to accomplish have become massively easier to progress on.
Yes, and I apologise if I veer off topic a bit, but I find all of these things below inter-related.
I've found that creating more space in my brain (I am prone to suffering anxiety) removes the friction I have in starting tasks and increases the enjoyment I get out of them.
Not only have goals become easier to progress on, but I've found that I can take on more.
All of this is a work in progress though, some days/weeks/months are easier than others - but equally the more I learn the more tools I have to deal with setbacks.
For me the things that have had a huge positive impact besides just changing my mind set are:
Wim Hof Method - I felt this would be worth trying to improve my asthma, but I've found it taught me how to meditate too - using this as a spring board I'm exploring other and further meditation techniques.
CBD Oil - this absolutely slayed my baseline anxiety, even if it turns out just to be a placebo, I place high weight on this simple act changing a lot for me.
Exercise (also a goal) - towards the end of last year I was around ~90kg @ 182cm, I'm now around ~75kg with some decent muscle definition - I've focused mostly on bodybuilding, watching the change in the mirror and taking a few minutes to appreciate the changes and my own hard work have been hugely rewarding for me. Also the enordphine rush from some of the workouts is great too.
Closely related to exercise is diet - this is something I am constantly paying attention to now (before I just didn't have the capacity and would happily chow down on McD's multiple times a week despite knowing how bad it was) changes in this impact not just my waist line but also my mood.
Jewelry - I discovered that while it's unusual for most men to do so that wearing jewelery makes me happy, so I disregard what anyone else may think and now wear quite a bit on a daily basis. Might seem a bit off-beat, but it's been a recent personal discovery and I think borne out of focusing just a bit more on being "me" not some ideal projection of myself.
Music (also a goal!), I've started to play the guitar again, I've had abortive attempts at this in the past but simply being able to say to myself "hey, I suck at this and it's OK because I enjoy it" has made it so much easier!
Now, of course there are goals that I am still failing at - learning Mandarin for instance - but seeing the progress on the others and by applying strategies I've learned from one goal or area of self improvement I am hopeful that I will eventually crack it.
Sorry if this diverted and went off topic, but I hope my experiences and rambling helps some people!
Your comment was very helpful. Some questions if your comfortable answering:
How did you change your mindset? Books, articles, techniques?
I currently employ THC to help with my baseline anxiety but that has been going downhill for me recently. May give CBD oil a shot. Do you just vape it?
When you say Wim Hof Method, do you include the cold therapy or just the breathing?
I wonder how much does lack of healthy relationships (romantic or otherwise) plays a role? That has been my biggest problem.
Unfortunately changing my mindset has just been a slow process (and I still think I have a lot further to go!) no real technique - I just try to invert negative thoughts and be grateful for what I have. I do not always succeed.
CBD oil I just use a tincture that I apply under my tongue - I'll also occasionally add edible capsules if I feel a day is going to be particularly stressful. From my experiments with THC as a teenager, we didn't mix well - I also used nicotine for a very long time, I wouldn't recommend it though!
For WHM I also do cold showers - I wasn't a fan at first, but now most of my showers are cold. I will note that I live in a fairly tropical climate so "cold" here isn't exactly freezing - I'm interested to see what the experience will be like towards winter as the water temperature will gradually drop. I do find I get the most out of it during periods of breath holding as it really let's me empty my mind.
Lack of healthy relationships can be huge - due to expatriating and people I knew leaving the country I am in I don't have a great deal of close friends who live in the same country as me - I am however happily married.
None of these are absolutes and it has taken me a long time to get to where I am.
I will also readily admit that in many areas I have been exceedingly fortunate and as a result there are many things I don't have to worry about that others do, this naturally makes some things easier - all our paths are unique.
I wish you continuous, steady progress in this endeavor! Like you, I try every day to view what I have through the lens of gratitude, and it helps me a lot.
> Instead of understanding the mind (and consequently the body) as a system and listening to whatever small traces your mind has left in its great attempt to solve really important problems for you, we just blind ourselves to faux goals that we may not even actually want.
Well, what might those problems be? What goals do we “really” want?
For most of humanity, the majority of humans have had little options to change their predicament. Our brains evolved for hunting/gathering in tribes. A few thousand years ago we learned agriculture and started settling down. Very recently, we’ve improved the lives for a majority of humanity enabling many people, for the first time in our evolutionary existence, a choice in how to live their life. And that choice is either extremely empowering or terrifyingly debilitating.
The self help industry has grown to serve this market. There’s definitely a lot of “positive mentality” stuff but we also have a lot of people that are benefiting hugely from getting help from mental health experts.
Our brains have evolved mainly for cultural knowledge accumulation over generations.
We must learn any specific hunting/gathering skills from role models while growing up. We even learn from others what goals are worth achieving. We are right now learning from each other how to think about our goals and problems.
This is not the first time humans have the choice of picking their goals. Even on an evolutionary scale we have always had cultural institutions to guide us with that (and/or exploit us). For example we have thousands of years of stories about worthy and unworthy goals.
I totally agree. I'd add this : of course it helps to have life goals because it helps to structure, to not get lost. But I'm confident that the vast majority of us doesn't have a life goal. Most of use figure out a new small goal from time to time. And we'd be so much better if we'd recognize that a non-heroic life is just as good as any other.
>And we'd be so much better if we'd recognize that a non-heroic life is just as good as any other.
This is something I've struggled to come to terms with. But looking at my grandpa as an example, he had some plaques and things commemorating him in his local community after he died. He wasn't a hero and he didn't change the world (outside of, by all accounts, being a decent dad and husband), but he was an invested and involved member of his local community.
I'm not the local community type (like being nomadic too much) but my parallel is contributing work to open source projects I use. It's not heroic or a big life goal, but it'll leave the open source community very slightly better than it would have been without me, and that's something.
> seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason
...no?
In almost all cases, these syndromes are not appropriate responses to the environmental stimulus. OCD is not adaptive in any situation. Neither is Tourette's. Neither is anorexia nervosa. Neither is akinetic mutism. Neither is tardive dyskinesia.
(Hypomania and ADHD-PI might be adaptive in exceptional environments — there's some fun hypotheses about that. But these are the exception. Most neurological conditions have no such "advantageous situation" where expressing the phenotype in a lifelong way—or even the constant lifelong potential to trigger the response—would be always advantageous to your reproductive success.)
Instead, as we now understand, these syndromes happen almost always because of random genetic mutations to genes coding for proteins/enzymes responsible for creating, transporting, receiving, and destroying neurotransmitters.
Like, for example, https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs53576. Get an A;A mutation, and your brain's ability to react to oxytocin is toast. (And this is common! And just look at all the reported downstream effects when it happens!)
There's no purpose to this mutation. Just like there's no purpose for a gamma ray bit-flipping a DRAM memory cell. Your genes aren't set up carefully so that randomness will intentionally introduce this SNP every so often, to ensure there are some people like this in the population. Rather the opposite: your cellular machinery will, in fact, try as hard as possible to ensure that this mutation doesn't happen (with introns, redundant coding sites, gene silencing, etc.)
And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success. They weed themselves out of the gene pool, rather than being passed on. Non-functioning versions of beneficial genes are always-recessive vs. their working versions, and so will be bred out of the gene pool. These are un-selfish genes.
So, that (hopefully) being clear: why should my mind listen to the goals my broken brain is setting for me? I know better than it does. Like the fault-tolerant software running on a Mars rover "knows better" than the rover's individual CPUs do, blasted with radiation as they are.
I, as a mind (and even better, I as a cyborg of mind + written storage), can perform the sort of long term comparative analysis of my own emotional states, that my brain on its own simply can't. And therefore, I know things about my brain that my brain doesn't.
My brain isn't a wise old wizard with mysterious purposes, who I should trust to tell me what to do. It's an overclocked gaming PC during a brownout, that desperately needs a UPS.
Yikes. You make some pretty strong claims that are not credible on their face.
1. "Not adaptive in any situation..."
Putting aside the many problems with evolutionary psychological explanations (just-so theory, underdetermination, so-called disjunction and grain problems), there's actually an very strong argument to OCD's adaptive role, both at the individual (threat response) and group. I think the group argument is most compelling, as various degrees of neuroticism have very high upside for risk management over time.
Or take depression for example. It can serve, theoretically, to reduce risk of conflict and death when social hierarchies might be in flux, it's a way to honestly signal a problem to ones group, it could be a mechanism to accurately try and signal a problem to oneself like physical pain does, its been theorized to potentially reduce risk of infection, etc.
2. These genes very clearly do not weed themselves out of the gene pool. In fact, mental illness has been on the rise, probably mostly because neurodiversity has been increasingly pathologized. The social construct in which these are considered disordered is hugely important.
3. Your comment about that empathy snp is extreme genetic essentialsm and determinism. Moreover, it's a single snp. I don't know of a single researcher who'd claim that something as complicated as empathy is either toast or not toast from a single snp.
Like all evolutionary psychology you can argue forever about the 'adaptive value' of any behaviour and characteristic and never know whether what you're saying is true or just completely and utterly wrong. It has a reputation for a reason. I could make a list full of hundreds of reasons why depression might be adaptive - that it's so darn easy should serve as a warning why it's often a bad idea to theorise like this.
Do you have a source for the claim that these mental disorders or syndromes occur due to genetic mutations in almost all cases?
Also, you seem to be saying that even in the cases where a person is left with a bad brain (due to genetic bad luck), their I/mind is still perfectly capable of a rational analysis of their emotional states (here you seem to agree with GP) and can thus act reasonably despite a broken brain. But why wouldn't a bad brain almost necessarily result in a mind that is not capable of such analysis, or on acting on the result of such an analysis?
> And, to be even more clear, these are unfit mutations, that lower their subjects' reproductive success.
I don't believe this first claim is true and from my understanding the second isn't supported by current evolutionary thought. Could you explain more about why you believe these syndromes are never appropriate responses?
I can offer my own anecdotes that OCD gives me a competitive advantage in many aspects of life despite its drawbacks. But I'd like to hear more of your thoughts.
I would love to hear your anecdotes about OCD’s competitive advantage, if only because I find it extremely hard to believe.
OCD is not a knack for being organized or orderly. Without even mentioning the compulsions, it’s a never-ending onslaught of intrusive thoughts and corresponding anxieties.
Managed well, it’s still a permanent distraction that’s always in the background. Managed poorly, it’s life-ruining. I don’t see how either could yield a competitive advantage in any scenario.
OCD isn't double-checking your line-spacing in a document, it's being unable to leave the house in under 45 minutes because you check the stove twenty times, then the door lock twenty, then turn around 5 minutes down the street to check again, then make a deal with yourself that you'll check the stove 3 times in a row and then not allow yourself to do it again, only you do it again anyways and finally take a picture of it so you can discretely check the photo on your phone when you're out on your date that you showed up half an hour late to.
I’m not the person you responded to, but I’ve lived with a person who had a case of OCD that I’m confident saying is definitely not adaptive. To give one anecdote among many, this person would spend the entire day in the shower because they got a spot of grease on their pants. Episodes of this severity were common (ie. sometimes happening daily for extended stretches of time). They explained the cause of the behavior as a failure of communication between the part of the brain and solves a problem and the part that needs to acknowledge that the problem has been solved so the solving can stop. I don’t know if that tracks with psychiatry, but explanation made sense to me.
I don't think it is even closely true that mental problems like this are sorely caused by genetic mutations. There is a careful chemical balance in your brain and it can get out of order by food, drugs, trauma and probably a lot of other factors unknown to us.
Our lifestyle isn't very natural, we have long left natural selection behind for that matter.
> There is a careful chemical balance in your brain
Homeostasis processes, and redundant gene-coding sites in our DNA, mean that your body is mostly robust to environmental onslaughts. Animals have evolved in a competitive environment where these problems already existed: parasites want to control your brain; predators want to envenomate you before they eat you; prey species want to stop you in your tracks with toxins. But life evolves to adapt to these problems, becoming able to shrug most of them off if it's a consistent part of their niche. Most of the "spices" we eat are plant toxins we've adapted to be fine consuming.
When mutations happen, they don't always immediately cause a problem. What they more-often do, is to cause the body (or in this case, the brain) to lose some of its homeostatic mechanisms — to become less robust to these environmental onslaughts. The affected system becomes more vulnerable, or loses compensatory capacity — it remains able to function in the normal case, but loses the ability to function in the edge case.
Of course, some of our body processes are more robust/protected than others. Some systems (reward; inflammation; sleep) are very easy to "hack", for some reason; while others (libido; fear) are nearly impossible.
> Most types of meditative studies also force this notion of blindness.
In my experience, many seem to encourage the opposite (a higher awareness of one's emotional state). Perhaps certain techniques could be considered similar to horse blinders, but I definitely don't think "blindness" is the goal.
Reading Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning has been the best thing I ever read on this topic. Changed my whole perspective.
The tldr version goes something like: “Meaning is irrelevant, but humans need meaning to live. Pick any meaning you want. Doesn’t matter what, just choose something. Then go for it with all your might. If you ever find it wasn’t a good meaning, pick a new one. You’re a different person now anyway”
Sorry to blow your mind then, but to quote an HN comment of mine:
It seems Frankl has been somewhat exposed/debunked. Would you believe he was at Auschwitz for only a few days, performed medical experiments on Jews himself, and it appears his main thesis about attitude mattering above all else for survival in the camps is simply false.
>It seems Frankl has been somewhat exposed/debunked. Would you believe he was at Auschwitz for only a few days, performed medical experiments on Jews himself
The Wikipedia link doesn't mention anything of the sort. And the other discussion just points to the same link / "proof".
On the contrary, it does mention that he helped save thousands of mental patients from the Nazis, and that he was held not just in Auschwitz, but in 4 camps (in which case, whether he was in Auschwitz just for "a few days" is irrelevant).
As for the "performed medical experiments on Jews himself", which makes him sound like Mengele, what he did was treat people including Jews who had attempted suicide. He used electroshock therapy and even lobotomy, but those widely used in the time, they weren't some nazi-like experiments (and up to the 1970s in the USA for example).
>and it appears his main thesis about attitude mattering above all else for survival in the camps is simply false.
That's just what some other professor said in some papers. Not some definite rebuttal. You can find papers against anything...
I really loved Frankl's book as a teenager. I only learnt about his dark side, that the book was full of lies, recently. I didn't just read the wikipedia page, followed up the references, reading into several books that go into detail about it. The more you learn, the more disturbing and weird it gets. Yes in fact they do sound like disturbing Mengele-like experiments on people. His massive-bestseller book makes it sound like he was in Auschwitz for a long period, which is a total lie. (Did you read it? I can't imagine anyone who loved the book thinking it "irrelevant" whether he actually was at Auschwitz!)
edit: Gee, you're right about the wikpedia page! The controversy section has been entirely erased since I last looked! Very weird. Sorry about that. e.g. in April last year it looked like
Removed in April by, from their bio, "co-founder of the Viktor Frankl Institute of America. I was born in Vienna, Austria in 1974 and am the grandson of Viktor Frankl."
Oh thank you for finding that out. That sounds very fishy! It seems his grandson totally rewrote his page, including removing the long Controversy section. I'm not sure how that edit has been allowed to stand so long. (I put a comment on the talk page saying that just now.)
Huh. I didn’t get that synopsis at all from Frankl’s book, “Mans Search for Meaning” it’s been a long time, maybe I need to re-read, but what I got was “you may not be able to change what happens to you, but you can change how you respond to it, and this gives you power”
One of my favorite quotes from the book: "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way”.
Let's say one was caged in an unbreakable cage. Depression, anxiety, loneliness and boredom, would be natural reactions to such confinement. One could even say any opposite reactions wouldn't be fully human, something would be amiss. Being repressed and unable to do anything about it, often lead to depression and anxiety then. These things are sneaky, especially what is not readily visible to the eye.
Now, even though depression and anxiety can have many causes, including the individual itself and one's reactions. We know humans and living beings need physical and mental stimulation. Thus activities such as dancing, singing, whatever would activate joy, can help break bad spells. We don't know beforehand either, what we could have capacity to enjoy, so should seek out diverse experiences and people with an open mind.
Such tools may help to uncover a person's life's purpose. To find meaning, we need tools and other people as mirrors. We may even need to experience stuff we later actively decline, for many different reasons.
Thinking too much or one's attitudes, can hamper and limit much more than a person might realize. It's easy to miss out of one own's life, by comparing and vying for other people's lives. Also even though one would be totally miserable with another's plights!
So it is there, in-between activation and purpose, one need the reminder, that the purpose is not the end result. That life's not a journey. We alone judge good and bad, while life just is as it is regardless what we think and feel in each moment. Letting go of the destination and many concepts, we can realize it doesn't matter who is fully realized and perfect. That life happens perfectly every moment regardless, and that those who tell others what their meaning is, is full of * * * *.
sacriciing nothing. perseverance is hard work. it's all it is.
also i'm on twitter as nidnogg if you wanna know what hard work is yo i'll tweet you back if you like.
> But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”?
Nothing that matters to you. If it mattered to you it would be a life goal.
> The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life goals, that they wouldn’t achieve philosophical nor psychological satisfaction that they seek.
You've added a ton of words which literally don't even mean anything in context. Let me whittle this down:
> The reason why modern humans have increased risk of these symptoms is they know that even when they achieve their life goals, that they wouldn't achieve satisfaction.
Okay, we found an actual claim.
In his essay, Yes, We Have Noticed the Skulls, Scott Alexander notes that any intellectual movement that has been around for a while has made some mistakes, and is probably aware of them, so if there's some obvious failure of a movement, the people who still believe in the movement probably have learned from that failure. Communists are aware of Stalin murdering people and are wary of totalitarianism. Christians are aware of Torquemada torturing people and are wary of religious persecution. There are of course crazy communists and Christians who think Stalin and Torquemada were great, but they're not by any means the majority. If you talk to a communist and your big argument is "but, Stalin!" you're just showing exactly how outdated your knowledge is.
This is no exception. If your big criticism of psychology is that achieving your goals can leave you feeling empty, well, let me assure you, psychologists are well aware of this, and have studied it at length. This is not the gotcha you think it is.
There are two kinds of goals, process goals and outcome goals. Yes, outcome goals are likely to leave people feeling empty once the desired outcome achieved, which is why some psychologists think it's a good idea to focus on process goals instead. When you talk about "achieving" things and not feeling satisfaction, you're only talking about outcome goals, when there's a whole other type of goal that the article you're criticizing is probably talking about.
The discussion at hand is about the effects of “Perseverance towards life goals” when somebody has depression, anxiety, or what have you. The article mentions it is useful, and I can no doubt agree with that. It can be meditative, having a mission and all (perhaps one that you do not 100% agree with). It is satisfying, and can keep life afloat.
But this “fake mission” trick should be just that — a trick. A placeholder in life for when things get real tough. A patch on your wound that helps the wound heal. The patch isn’t healing the wound, your body is.
But people (e.g. self-help aficionados) become thoroughly entranced with this idea (among other bad ideas like growth
mindset) that they lose sight of the fact that a patch is a patch, a bandage a bandage. It has outlived its usefulness, but people keep treating it as a real solution.
Most often when people observe their mind they can dig up a lot of content. Depression, anxiety, and what have you are real things that you can explore and navigate. How to navigate and what to do with them is extremely difficult because we have never been taught how. We sort of induct what our parents and teachers do without explicitly categorizing/identifying what is going on in out minds. Most times we are running the same damn loop for the, what, millionth time in a row. The same situation, the same psychological response, the same result.
Without even going into replication crisis, there are a lot of psychological theories and therapies that are sold, to others and even to the theorizer him/herself. The mind is a value-seeking machine that will not deter itself from using fiction to understand the world and get what it wants.
Interestingly, the fiction of the mind acts as a patch itself, but it is never recognized by the self because the mind (most of the time) does it under the rug. So the patch sticks around and causes problems.
The solution is to recognize that the mind can employ fiction and slowly but surely the mind will start doing these things overtly visibly to you (simply because it doesn’t have to hide it anymore).
Stay on track with what the mind provides to you and be free about it (sometimes ignore it, hate it, listen to it, coddle it, be depressed, be anxious — to the mind emotions are generated and should be accepted without scores attached to them). Then the implicit goals will become explicit. But this hijacking of explicit goals without respecting implicit goals is pure whack.
Jesus dude, I'm really not sure whose post you're responding to, because you didn't address anything I said in my post.
> The discussion at hand is about the effects of “Perseverance towards life goals” when somebody has depression, anxiety, or what have you. The article mentions it is useful, and I can no doubt agree with that. It can be meditative, having a mission and all (perhaps one that you do not 100% agree with). It is satisfying, and can keep life afloat.
> But this “fake mission” trick should be just that — a trick. A placeholder in life for when things get real tough. A patch on your wound that helps the wound heal. The patch isn’t healing the wound, your body is.
There's nothing "fake" about life goals, and it's not a trick. When I say I want to have close, honest relationships, or when I say I want a contributing role in my community, I really want those things. These aren't placeholders, patches, or bandages for anything. They're actually what I want, and it's arrogant of you to think you know what I want better than I know what I want.
> Stay on track with what the mind provides to you and be free about it (sometimes ignore it, hate it, listen to it, coddle it, be depressed, be anxious — to the mind emotions are generated and should be accepted without scores attached to them). Then the implicit goals will become explicit. But this hijacking of explicit goals without respecting implicit goals is pure whack.
This implicit versus explicit goals dichotomy is something you made up, and then started accusing people of choosing one over the other. Nobody is suggesting choosing explicit goals over implicit goals. In fact, nobody even was talking about these things before you invented them. This is just a straw man argument.
The entirety of your post could have been reduced to around five sentences--this would be a great increase in clarity with no loss in meaning. Throwing in random parentheticals and clauses might fool dumb people into thinking what you're saying is smart, but smart people are going to suspect that you're hiding a bogus argument under layers of words.
You are taking this way more personally than you should be. You should probably check yourself and see if you aren’t being an asshole to other people with your supposed “intelligence”.
Ad hominem aside, is it so hard to understand the words “implicit” and “explicit”? They are English words, and implicit vs. explicit goals really isn’t all that hard to understand. Maybe people around you don’t use this language, but implicit vs. explicit models is a dichotomy I hear all the time among pretty smart people. And very useful distinction.
I don’t think you are capable of ingesting in new information or original thought. Your response to what I said about “fake mission” clearly demonstrates this. I also never said you don’t know your desires. I don’t even know you. Do you have so much time that you feel personally attacked by some (you would call) random assortment of words on the internet? Jeez.
I am seeing your other comments and you are just not that positive overall. Being skeptical and negative and doubtful isn’t a hallmark of intelligence, mind you.
> They are English words, and implicit vs. explicit goals really isn’t all that hard to understand.
The problem isn't that they are hard to understand, the problem is that they have nothing to do with what anyone was talking about. When someone says, "Persevering in goals can alleviate negative feelings", saying "Explicit goals can distract from implicit goals" isn't a response, it's a non-sequitur.
> Being skeptical and negative and doubtful isn’t a hallmark of intelligence, mind you.
Being skeptical and doubtful are definitely hallmarks of intelligence. The alternative to skepticism is blind faith. The alternative to doubt is unjustified confidence.
In the rest of your post you've decided to attack me personally, to which my only response is going to be: you're accusing me of ad hominem attacks?
They don't have to be, but in the absence of evidence, they are. That's just true by the definitions of the words.
Put another way: not all faith is blind, but faith without skepticism is blind faith; not all confidence is unjustified, but in the confidence without justification (evidence) is unjustified.
> In his essay, Yes, We Have Noticed the Skulls, Scott Alexander notes that any intellectual movement that has been around for a while has made some mistakes, and is probably aware of them, so if there's some obvious failure of a movement, the people who still believe in the movement probably have learned from that failure. Communists are aware of Stalin murdering people and are wary of totalitarianism.
I'm not so sure about that. So far, we've had dozens of implementations of communism all over the world and 100% of them ended up being authoritarian (i.e. if you disagree with the ruling party, you go to jail) or straight up murderous. This uncanny correlation suggests that it may not be impossible to actually implement anything like communism without it being evil. Jordan Peterson explores reasons for why that might be so.
> So far, we've had dozens of implementations of communism all over the world and 100% of them ended up being authoritarian (i.e. if you disagree with the ruling party, you go to jail) or straight up murderous.
sigh You read a post saying that "but look at these skulls!"-type arguments are naive and arrogant, and your response is a "but look at these skulls!"-type argument? Really?
Which of these[1] pacifist[2] communes[3] do you think fit into your 100% number that you made up without researching?
I'm not defending communism or Christianity here, I'm saying find out what people actually believe and why they believe it before you criticize, instead of criticizing high-profile failures of their movement which they probably recognize and disagree with.
> Jordan Peterson explores reasons for why that might be so.
The fact that Jordan Peterson is exploring reasons for why something might be so which isn't so, tells me all I need to know about Jordan Peterson's opinions on the subject: they're uninformed opinions.
All of these examples are not societies implementing communism, but just merely small groups of people who do so, in a safe bubble provided by a non-communist society (US or Israel) which surrounds them. They benefit immensely from the wealth and protection coming from the surrounding non-communist society. These conditions do not translate in any way to larger scale implementation and it's not what majority of people mean when they discuss communism. I'd like to see one example of communist society of let's say even just 1 million people that is not a colossal failure.
> All of these examples are not societies implementing communism
How so?
> but just merely small groups of people who do so, in a safe bubble provided by a non-communist society (US or Israel) which surrounds them. They benefit immensely from the wealth and protection coming from the surrounding non-communist society.
If you talk to communists, I think you'll find a lot of communists agree with this.
EDIT: That said, I think you may be underestimating the degree of independence these communes have. Keep in mind, Maoz Haim was founded in 1937, before Israel existed, which makes it a bit hard to argue that it's dependent on Israel. All three of these communes have a high degree of food and energy independence.
> These conditions do not translate in any way to larger scale implementation
So what? I think if you talk to communists, you'll find a lot of communists agree with this as well.
Sometimes solutions don't have to scale. A famous communist once said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the idea of a cancer cell." (Okay, maybe it's a bit of a stretch to call Edward Abbey a communist).
> it's not what majority of people mean when they discuss communism.
So what? The majority of people don't get to tell communists what communists believe. A straw man argument doesn't become valid because the majority of people believe the straw man is real.
Your argument stating that communism is evil everywhere its implemented is ridiculous - communism exists at varied scales, so of course, there have been huge authoritarian states, but also many communes, worker cooperatives and cities which didnt turn out like the nightmare you make it to be.
Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life goals, that they wouldn’t achieve philosophical nor psychological satisfaction that they seek. Their mind has predicted the conclusion of their efforts, and the conclusion lies far below what they seek. Thus the mind desperately attempts to re-understand, re-configure, and re-model the world to achieve its goals.
But instead what is espoused by modern psychology and self-help is a kind of blind optimism or a horse blinders kind of approach to tending one’s mind. Most types of meditative studies also force this notion of blindness. Depression and anxiety and other “disorders” (whose classification from its onset is very unhelpful for its ideological integration into society as a valid problem to work through) most often happen to those who are sensitive, those who have surprisingly extensive models of the world, etc.
But it has become very fashionable in SV intelligentsia and the communities that drink the intelligence soup that trickles down from the SV community (like other cities of America or other America-directed tech communities) to treat the mind as a dumb system that did a poor job evolving to a modern environment (e.g. rationality movement). Instead of understanding the mind (and consequently the body) as a system and listening to whatever small traces your mind has left in its great attempt to solve really important problems for you, we just blind ourselves to faux goals that we may not even actually want.
Optimization for optimization’s sake is bad, but goal-seeking for goal-seeking’s sake may be a significantly worse and dangerous meme.