[HN Gopher] The best way to exercise self-control is not to exer...
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The best way to exercise self-control is not to exercise it at all
Author : MurizS
Score : 179 points
Date : 2020-08-15 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (psyche.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (psyche.co)
| agumonkey wrote:
| Who uses the trick to divert impulses into other ones ? your
| brain seems to seek stimuli.. hunger is just one source, you can
| clean, jog, challenge yourself somewhere else.
|
| Few times I did that I was surprisingly effective (and the
| original impulse disappeared in an instant)
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| tl;dr David Goggins is right.
| sukilot wrote:
| The title is misleading as usual.
|
| The article is about removing temptation being a better strategy
| than exercising self-control in the face of temptation (This is
| then "cultural/religious conservative morality" theory for
| protecting against immoral behavior).
|
| Judaism calls it "building a fence around the boundary of the
| law".
| hprotagonist wrote:
| all things in moderation, including moderation.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| Perhaps I'm the only one who thought the article was going to
| suggest eating the entire dozen cookies in one go until I'm
| disgusted with myself, then I'll stop.
| war1025 wrote:
| This seems in line with both my personal experience and the
| "systems vs goals" approach advocated by Scott Adams.
|
| Build systems into your life that lead to desired outcomes
| naturally. Don't put yourself into situations that are likely to
| lead to bad outcomes.
|
| The easiest way to get results is to live a life that gives you
| the desired results by default.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I guess there's a bit of abstract economy behind this. A good
| context is worth a lot of efforts. Just like a clean space, a
| nicely organized workshop, a well tuned chair desk keyboard..
|
| Thing is it's hard to create that context. Maybe copying good
| ideas or joining forces..
| dreeves wrote:
| Back in 2015 we (Beeminder) wrote a blog post praising Scott
| Adam's "systems vs goals" insight which I still stand by:
| https://blog.beeminder.com/systems/
|
| Excerpt (quoting Adams):
|
| If you do something every day, it's a system. If you're waiting
| to achieve it someday in the future, it's a goal. [...] Goal-
| oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess
| failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never
| work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their
| systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do.
| The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at
| each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they
| apply their system. That's a big difference in terms of
| maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.
|
| Also related: SMART goals.
| teddyh wrote:
| If you want it from Adams himself, here's a link to a blog
| post:
|
| https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/
|
| Alternatively, as a ~5-minute video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw
| mmastrac wrote:
| > [...] Scott Adams [...] Don't put yourself into situations
| that are likely to lead to bad outcomes.
|
| This is an unfortunate statement. Ironic that Scott Adams has
| basically tanked his own reputation outside the alt-right
| through a set of poor choices recently.
|
| Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet accounts
| on Reddit and Metafilter to pump his own image.
| pl0x wrote:
| Scott Adams has fueled many conspiracies on the alt-right,
| COVID conspiracies, and recently has show his true colors as
| a racist, claiming he got his show pulled because he was
| white. Naval Ravikant appears frequently on his show and also
| fueled COVID conspiracies.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _has show his true colors as a racist, claiming he got
| his show pulled because he was white_
|
| You can claim/believe that without being a racist.
|
| It's enough that those calling the shots (which show to
| pull) are racist or too pre-occupied about race...
| rdtwo wrote:
| People can be brilliant in some areas and absolutely
| batshit in others. I think that is the norm not the
| exception actually. If you discount their brilliance
| because of occasional batshittery you'll miss out on a lot
| of insightful stuff.
| 127 wrote:
| Yes, COVID conospiracies like: masks work.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| He's racist because he thinks he was the victim of racism?
| I'm curious what you think about black BLM protesters?
| tome wrote:
| > Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet
| accounts on Reddit and Metafilter
|
| I don't remember that. Could you link some supporting
| evidence to remind me?
| teddyh wrote:
| https://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_
| s...
|
| (Link courtesy of Pxtl1)
|
| This was nine years ago, though. If he hasn't done anything
| comparable since, I think he ought to get some slack by
| now.
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667728
| tome wrote:
| Thanks!
| saeranv wrote:
| Yes. For those that doubt this, consider:
|
| 1. He's one of those people that thinks Trump is playing 4D
| chess.
|
| 2. He 'successfully' predicted Trump would win the election,
| and has subsequently fooled himself into thinking he has some
| special insight into social dynamics and interpreting Trump's
| 4D chess that allows him to continue making accurate
| predictions. I'm sure the more predictions he makes, the
| closer he'll get to a 50% success rate (binomial theorem) -
| as do most 'expert' political prognosticators who aren't
| using statistical models but going off their intuition. I
| wonder if he'll figure out what's happening.
|
| When I read his writings, I just see an incredibly naive
| approach to prediction, ignorant of probability, that is
| primarily informed by the fact that he's a Republican who
| therefore is biased towards favorably interpreting Republican
| odds.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _a set of poor choices recently._
|
| Care to give a link? Last time someone actually came through
| with links to their allegations about Scott Adams, _all_ of
| them were false, misleading, taken out of context, etc.,
| except one: the old sockpuppet incident from nine years ago.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Ironic that Scott Adams has basically tanked his own
| reputation outside the alt-right through a set of poor
| choices recently._
|
| Or in other words, stated opinions that disagree with yours /
| polite Californian dinner talk.
| dtech wrote:
| Quote from him on women
|
| > The reality is that women are treated differently by
| society for exactly the same reason that children and the
| mentally handicapped are treated differently. [1]
|
| Yes, very California bubble to think that women are equal
| and not like children or mentally handicapped
|
| [1] https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-
| rights/
| teddyh wrote:
| That's yet another quote taken wildly out of context.
| Context explained here:
|
| https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/03/27/im-a-what/
| wombatmobile wrote:
| He says:
|
| > But perhaps I can summarize my viewpoint so you can
| understand why I'm such a misogynist asshole douche bag.
| Here's my view in brief:
|
| > You can't expect to have a rational discussion on any
| topic that has an emotional charge. Emotion pushes out
| reason. That is true for all humans, including children,
| men, women, and people in every range of mental ability.
| The path of least resistance is to walk away from that
| sort of fight. Men generally prefer the path of least
| resistance. The exception is when men irrationally debate
| with other men. That's a type of sport. No one expects
| opinions to be changed as a result.
| teddyh wrote:
| I would not normally try to summarize a long complex
| explanation, but I would think that this section would
| also be crucial to include in any summary:
|
| > First, some background. A few weeks ago I asked readers
| of this blog to suggest a topic they would like to see me
| write about. The topic that got the most up votes, by a
| landslide, was something called Men's Rights. Obviously
| the fix was in. Activists had mobilized their minions to
| trick me into giving their cause some free publicity. In
| retrospect, the Men's Rights activists probably should
| have done some homework on me before hatching this
| scheme.
|
| > As you can see, I thought it would be funny to embrace
| the Men's Rights viewpoint in the beginning of the piece
| and get those guys all lathered up before dismissing
| their entire membership as a "bunch of pussies."
| arkis22 wrote:
| haha, yeah. who in the world treats women differently
| than men?
| war1025 wrote:
| But he also has F-you money coming out his ears, so he can do
| pretty well whatever he wants.
|
| And his following is bigger than you might expect.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| So is qanon's - it doesn't mean Adams isn't nuts.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Calling him nuts is one of those cognition-enders. No
| need for further analysis if someone is just plain nutz
| amirite?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Anyone who admits they had sock puppets to defend himself
| is kinda nuts.
| teddyh wrote:
| _Was_ kinda nuts. Nine years ago. About whether using
| sockpuppets was remotely acceptable. On that specific
| forum, on that specific topic. OK, sure.
|
| Sockpuppet accounts for trolling used to be common on
| several niche forums on the internet (which is how this
| practice got a name), especially this many years ago. I
| could certainly see how someone could be confused about
| how sockpuppeting was or was not acceptable behavior on a
| specific forum. He might have thought (but I'm
| speculating here) that he was engaging with (i.e.
| trolling) the forum within the (semi-)established norm of
| behavior for that forum.
|
| Is that all the rope with which you would have him
| hanged? That stump is so short that you couldn't even tie
| a knot with it.
|
| If Adams only had kept his observations about Trump to
| himself, none of this would be an issue. But no, now
| everybody's gotta find those crucial six lines somewhere
| in all the things he's ever written, and whenever someone
| mentions anything he's ever said, _especially if it's not
| about Trump or about politics in any way_ , it _must_ be
| overwhelmed with random lists of accusations, all of
| which are false, misleading, or ancient and irrelevant,
| or all three. Merely to thoroughly discredit anyone even
| remotely associated with Trump.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Looking at Google Groups, my first post to Usenet was in
| 1993. So yeah, I know something about early consumer
| Internet culture. Even then sock puppets were frowned
| upon.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Getting caught defending yourself online with multiple
| account makes you look bad and is petty, but it's not
| nuts.
|
| Admitting to something when there's prevailing evidence
| against you isn't nuts either.
|
| Almost all HNers have no clue what it's like to have
| people coming together in great numbers to talk bad about
| you (to say nothing of whether you "deserve" it).
|
| The guy can't even get away with marrying a younger
| consenting adult woman without being burned at the stake.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Really? An adult can't handle random people saying mean
| things about them on the internet?
| war1025 wrote:
| > It doesn't mean Adams isn't nuts
|
| To paraphrase something Scott Adams said about Mike
| Cernovich, another "alt-right lunatic":
|
| "You might not like his style, but he sure is right a
| lot"
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| And how is the reputation of the world-famous "mmastrac"
| faring these days? I bet he has valuable insight on this
| topic, let's listen to what he has to say.
| arkis22 wrote:
| I urge you to distinguish good advice from the people that
| say it. It might benefit you.
| rdiddly wrote:
| OK people have begun commenting below, so have the courtesy
| to label your addenda with "edit" or the like, OK?
|
| [outside the alt-right]
|
| [Remember that this is the guy] etc.
| [deleted]
| treeman79 wrote:
| He has had decades of brilliant insight into how people,
| companies, and government work.
|
| People really need to start considering alternative view
| points. Like perhaps maybe he is right on a number of topics.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| In 2016 he said Trump would win in a landslide and there
| would be rioting. Trump lost the popular vote and won the
| electoral college by a margin of less than 100k votes in
| three states. This year he tweeted that Republicans will be
| hunted, telling his followers that they will be dead in a
| year. We're supposed to take him seriously?
| ggreer wrote:
| Weren't everyone's predictions wrong in 2016? I remember
| news organizations like the New York Times saying that
| Clinton had a 91% chance of winning the election.[1]
| 538's Nate Silver said that Clinton had a 99% chance of
| winning.[2] Scott Adams has many faults, but his 2016
| election prediction fared better than pretty much
| everyone else. Remember he predicted a "win against
| Clinton in a tight election" in August of 2015.[3]
|
| 1. http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/preside
| ntial-...
|
| 2. Silver also noted that such a probability was too high
| considering the margin for error in polls, calling into
| question his model: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid
| eo/2016/11/06/nate_silv...
|
| 3. https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/13/clown-
| genius/
| wgerard wrote:
| > Weren't everyone's predictions wrong in 2016?
|
| Actually if you go look at the NYT polls, Trump had a
| monumental surge in the later half of October that caused
| the result to look much closer. Probably no small part of
| this was the additional FBI investigation into Clinton's
| emails, which was announced Oct 28 (10 days after the NYT
| article you posted).
|
| If you go look at the polls from right before the actual
| election it looks significantly closer:
|
| NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/election
| s/polls....
|
| 538: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-
| forecast/
|
| It's not completely unthinkable for a 20-30% probability
| event to occur. Further, it is quite a rare occurrence
| for a candidate to win the election without winning the
| popular vote: This was only the fifth time in American
| history it's happened.
| ggreer wrote:
| Right. My point was that if you use 2016 election
| predictions as evidence that Adams is delusional, then
| you should also use major media organizations' 2016
| predictions as evidence of greater delusion. Adams called
| the election a year beforehand. At the same time, Nate
| Silver was giving Trump a 2% chance of being nominated.
| The dude is batty in some ways, but he clearly saw
| something that most of us didn't.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| What you said doesn't refute that the guy isn't brilliant
| indeed
| treeman79 wrote:
| Good point.
|
| If the standard is 100% accuracy on all predictions. Well
| that is problematic.
|
| Even still. He predicted a trump victory and riots. Took
| awhile, but the core was correct. Lot of rioting going on
| now.
| rmoriz wrote:
| A personal anecdote: I'm seriously obese and all diets and
| habitual changes to cut calorie intake failed except doing strict
| OMAD (one meal a day, 23:1).
|
| For me dealing with food in just one (1) meal/sitting a day is
| way easier than cutting meal sizes and incredients 5+ times a
| day. I also "know" that I will be sated 1 time per day, so no
| prolonged hunger phase anxiety. "Opportunity makes the thief" so
| just limit the opportunities.
|
| So to speak "marshmallows are secured" in any case, except that
| over time I learned that high carb foods/sweets will make me
| hungry much earlier again.
|
| I'm sticking to this for 374 days as of today and lost
| ~44kgs/97lbs with regular medical support of my GP (recent blood
| work was really great).
| arkitaip wrote:
| That's great to hear. Really wishing you the best on this.
| mlazos wrote:
| This kind of approach has generally worked for me but I take it a
| little further. I've gone by this adage that "a little bit each
| day" is better than doing a lot in a single day with a few days
| off. For instance with exercise (Running) instead of saying no to
| doing it I say ok maybe half the distance. And as a result it
| turns into a habit which I think is the single most important
| tool we have to improve ourselves. It's kind of taking this
| situational approach and applying it every day. Another example
| from my life is soda. I read a lot about the negative effects
| sugar has on my body and as a result I feel guilty when I buy it,
| this is another way to motivate myself into a habit of "not
| buying soda" I started to buy less and now when it isn't even
| available my laziness prevents me from leaving the house to go
| get it :) this is really similar to another comment that said
| "create systems" where the inevitable outcome is your goal, and I
| find parallels between this "system" idea and culture in general.
| Culture is what can drive large groups of people to desirable
| outcomes. This is as if we apply having a good "culture" within
| ourselves.
| rocqua wrote:
| A thing I read a long time ago that really encapsulates this
| recently came up in my mind again.
|
| If you want to get better, work on your B-game, not your
| A-game. The goal is not to excel even harder on days that are
| good. The goal is to move up the baseline performance. This
| will probably lift up your A-game as well. But more importantly
| it gives you a base to build on.
|
| It stops me from over-reaching. It stops me from being
| disappointment most of the time because I don't reach my lofty
| goal. Instead, it gives meaningful improvement, and many small
| successes.
| dreeves wrote:
| Related: https://blog.beeminder.com/willpower/
|
| Excerpt:
|
| Here's what I mean when I say there's no such thing as willpower,
| despite having just defined it. Paraphrasing Laplace, I can
| explain all behavior simply in terms of responding to incentives.
| You want this whole pie in your body right now, and also you want
| to be two sizes smaller by next summer. Conflicting preferences
| are normally no big deal. You just, y'know, weigh them, make your
| tradeoffs, and reach a decision. But when the preferences apply
| at different timescales (pie now, thinner later) humans suffer
| from a massive irrationality which philosophers call akrasia and
| economists call dynamic inconsistency and normal people call ...
| being stupidly short-sighted, or in the case of time management:
| procrastination.
|
| Commitment devices are a way to change your own incentives so
| that willpower is a non-issue. They make your short-term and
| long-term incentives line up. There are many less drastic things
| you can do as well.
|
| PS: Also the whole "willpower is like a muscle" theory, known as
| Ego Depletion, failed to replicate.
| hobofan wrote:
| Though Ego Depletion doesn't seem to be a thing as you pointed
| out, "willpower is like a muscle" can still hold up if you take
| the depletion part out of the equation (muscle endurance vs.
| muscle strength). At least for the underlying neurological
| mechanisms, there seems to be a connection between connectivity
| of parts of the prefrontal cortex and the ability to self-
| regulate, and those parts also appear to be trainable.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Can you cite some studies which have been replicated
| successfully and show this effect? I have been looking for
| them off and on, and have been able to find any which seem
| robust.
| hobofan wrote:
| As for a higher level psychological effect, I'm not aware
| of any studies (as that is also farther away from my field
| of study), and I'd also like to know of any.
|
| As for the underlying neurobiology, I think [0] is a decent
| study for identifying the relevant regions involved in
| procrastination in particular, and [1] is a good review
| about PFC plasticity. Of course that individually doesn't
| indicate a higher level effect, but dismissing it
| altogether in the same breath as ego depletion also doesn't
| seem right.
|
| [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33203
|
| [1]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.06.028
| noncoml wrote:
| > You want this whole pie in your body right now, and also you
| want to be two sizes smaller by next summer.
|
| Isn't this more like a fight between instinct and rationality?
|
| Wanting the pie is rarely a rational decision, while on the
| other hand wanting to be healthy so you can live longer is
| absolutely rational.
|
| Hence willpower is one's ability to rationally control their
| own anamalistic instincts and emotions.
| dreeves wrote:
| Yeah, it's surprisingly controversial but I agree, your long-
| term self is usually the rational one. Commitment devices are
| all about forcing/incentivizing your short-term self to do
| what your long-term self deems best. Sometimes people are too
| extreme with that, like intentionally living in near poverty
| their whole life in order to save as much as humanly possible
| for retirement, or suffering through a PhD program they hate
| because they think it will eventually be worth it.
|
| But those are the exceptions. Mostly it's the other way
| around, as you say. People undermine their own long-term
| interests with procrastination or impetuousness.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Wanting to eat things that are delicious because you enjoy
| the flavor sounds perfectly rational to me. I'll enjoy the
| anticipation while I'm getting it, I'll enjoy the experience
| when I'm eating it, and a piece of pie is not going to stop
| me from being healthy by itself.
|
| Sure wanting to eat the whole pie might be irrational, but
| that's seldom the way people think about it. I can't eat a
| whole pie at once, but I can definitely eat the bite on my
| fork, add one more slice to my plate, etc.
|
| This mistakes thinking long-term vs thinking marginally,
| which is the larger point being made.
| luismmolina wrote:
| I use beeminder to do pushups, drink water, cut my hair, wash
| my clothes, run and do my work. Is not perfect but is the best
| tool I have found to beat my terrible procrastination. It has
| changed my life
| dreeves wrote:
| Holy cow it feels good to hear that! Thank you!
| idclip wrote:
| Doing a mahayasi vipassana helps create a sense for the
| ,,thinker" and other faculties of the mind
|
| Though your argument would honestly just move one dimension up
| since it takes a certain motivation and condition to go and
| seek that kind of discipline training.
|
| The ultimate end of the Buddhist meditations is to let go so
| you're right but in the beginning there's a sort of healthy
| shedding of dealing with delusions and ideas that create
| Desirees and ice that do not service which is a bit behind
| incentive incentive itself becomes being free of those desires,
| A sort of seeking liberation.
| sukilot wrote:
| The beeminder theory is undermining by the very concept of
| money, especially credit cards, which removes the short term
| cost of losing money.
|
| A simpler way to get the same result is to make the future
| present by surrounding yourself with pictures of your goals.
| dreeves wrote:
| Ah, I don't agree but that's an interesting point that I
| could see being true for some people.
|
| I think mostly there's plenty of short-term cost to derailing
| a Beeminder goal and getting the alert "we are now charging
| you $X". Not as good as handing over cash but still pretty
| good!
|
| I definitely disagree that surrounding yourself with pictures
| of your goals is comparable. I mean, it can't hurt and maybe
| for some people it's enough, but for me personally, for
| example, things like that just fade into the background for
| me and lose their effectiveness. A commitment device
| (monetary or otherwise) doesn't let that happen!
| TACIXAT wrote:
| Just looked beeminder up. If anyone else doesn't know it's
| goal tracking and contracts where you pay them if you fail.
| I'd feel a lot better about that if they were doing something
| positive with the money, like donating.
| andreilys wrote:
| Lookup stickk who donates to an anti charity
| dreeves wrote:
| Thanks, yes! Here are all the other commitment device
| apps we know of: https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors/
|
| But as I said to Maneesh above, I think anti-charities
| are anti-good. https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity/
| maneesh wrote:
| If they donate to something you approve of, often people
| will excuse their failures by saying "at least the money is
| going to a good cause"
|
| when I made my bets to places I don't approve of---well I
| would never lose a bet where I had money to the KKK on the
| line, I'll tell you that
| dreeves wrote:
| Hi Maneesh! I'm actually opposed to anti-charities
| because I think they're bad for the world and not
| necessary -- you can get equal motivation with a neutral
| (non-evil) 3rd party, as long as you make the amount at
| risk high enough. More at
| https://blog.beeminder.com/anticharity/
|
| PS: As you know I'm a huge fan of Pavlok --
| https://pavlok.com/ -- and definitely don't think that my
| arguments against anti-charities apply to it even though
| they're both very punishment focused. Pavlok (obviously
| I'm saying this for others, not Maneesh, founder of
| Pavlok!) is more about classical conditioning while
| Beeminder is more operant conditioning.
| [deleted]
| dreeves wrote:
| Oops, yes, I should've mentioned what Beeminder is! Thanks!
|
| We get that a lot ("where does the money go? wait, you do
| _what_ with it??") but I'm surprised to hear that pushback
| on Hacker News. Is the existence of Beeminder not
| "something positive"?
|
| More at https://blog.beeminder.com/defail/
| ByteJockey wrote:
| That actually would reduce the incentive to accomplish the
| goal, wouldn't it?
|
| Ideally you want something the person doesn't like to
| happen, that way you feel like you're doing real good
| (preventing harm) by accomplishing your goal. Like an alarm
| clock I saw once that donates a dollar to a political party
| you hate every time you hit the snooze button.
| blueboo wrote:
| "Willpower" is just another facet of attention. I claim it's
| easier to do deep work when not in a cluttered, crowded,
| overly-warm workspace with unasked for music, a dynamic
| precluded by the purely-incentive based model you're falling
| back on.
|
| You actually /can't/ just weigh the tradeoffs of being
| disctracted and reach a decision of not being distracted.
|
| No -- it's meaningfully and sustainably easier to make good
| decisions when bad options are removed from the table
| (sometimes literally.)
| dreeves wrote:
| Agreed. I wouldn't say any of these astute points argue
| against commitment devices (as it sounds like you're implying
| but I could be misreading you).
|
| A commitment device provides an incentive, including the
| incentive to eliminate distractions by going somewhere quiet
| or whatever else you need to do to follow through on what
| you've committed to.
| ismail wrote:
| I think the reason thinner later is harder to act to bring
| about, vs pie now is due to uncertainty. Thinner later is
| uncertain, hence I think our brains naturally discount the
| future goal, with a preference for the immediate.
|
| what has worked for me is thinking in terms of positive
| choices, rather than goals or restrictions.
|
| It's not "I am not going to eat that cookie"
|
| Rather it's
|
| "I am choosing to lead a healthier life.."
| jgilias wrote:
| I've found two approaches that seem to work quite well,
| especially when both are exercised.
|
| 1. Brainwash yourself. Taking the cookie example this would mean
| brainwashing yourself about the evils of sugar to the point that
| you really don't want the cookies anymore. This has to be
| consistent though, we're very good at forgetting uncomfortable
| things.
|
| 2. Building beneficial habits. If there's something that takes
| willpower to do, try building a habit of doing it. Takes around
| 40 days to achieve, and there are plenty of apps that can help.
| Once a habit is set though, the activity takes no willpower
| whatsoever. It's just something you do.
| agumonkey wrote:
| And related, a sense of benefit. You have to listen to the
| right parts of your mind.
| tlb wrote:
| How do you avoid side-effects of brainwashing yourself? Like
| being more vulnerable to believing other things that aren't
| true? Or increased tendency to see issues as black and white?
| mettamage wrote:
| I agree with 1. that works for me as well.
|
| With regards to 2. that has never worked for me by itself,
| unfortunately. What I do instead is to find a way to be
| intrinsically motivated. For example, with exercise I notice
| that the gain in alertness feels like drinking coffee. So I now
| tell myself to drink coffee (and by that I mean exercise), that
| really works well in my particular case and makes me
| intrinsically motivated to exercise as the alertness gained by
| exercise is its own reward. Though, I do need the right setup
| for this, I'm currently house sitting and I'm not exercising
| because I don't have my weights. So how habit formation for me
| does help is that the more I practice a routine, the easier it
| is to execute. Which is why I'm not exercizing right now as I'd
| need to do body weight exercises and I'm used to weight
| exercises.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Funny how this coincides almost point to point with what
| religions have been doing for centuries or millennia.
|
| Situational strategies: temptation with the opposite sex?
| Segregate education by sex, make women wear burkas, forbid
| shorts, etc.
|
| Distraction: "if you feel tempted, pray/read the Bible/think
| about God" is a very common religious tip.
|
| Reappraisal: reminding yourself of the consequences of sin,
| confession, atonement.
|
| Not defending any of that (I'm not even religious), but I just
| find the coincidences interesting. Are psychologies reinventing
| things that religions have known for centuries?
| viburnum wrote:
| I thought all these self-control and willpower studies have been
| recently debunked.
| jldugger wrote:
| They have. Or at least, replication studies have called the
| publication into question. And the marshmallow study the
| article cites is questionable.
|
| Frankly, the whole edifice of psych research is built on top of
| a statistical lie that only 1 in 20 experiments will fail to
| replicate, when it's more like 1 in 3:
| https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/08/27/this-is-what-happened-w...
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| I thought so too. This article provides nothing new IMO.
| ineedasername wrote:
| This was based (in part) on Angela Duckworth's work-- approach
| with great skepticism.
|
| She over simplified. Her Grit model is a good example. Grit is an
| awful metric that tries to boil down complex and independent
| behaviors to a single number. And the measurement tools are short
| 8 or 12 question assessments. In my experience the results are
| meaningless. (Source: I conducted a study of a population & their
| success at a task that takes 2 years. The result? Grit had no
| predictive value. Others have been equally unable to obtain
| results.)
|
| In this article, her model of self-control is both too complex
| and over simplified at the same time. The last 3 stages--
| attentional, appraisal, response-- are presented as 3 discrete
| phases. In reality, these often blur together into a single
| split-second decision. The proposed solutions to each stage are
| laughable: Instead of sitting staring at cookies, read book!
| Instead of thinking about how good they taste, tell yourself they
| look old! (you just bought them) Instead of eating the cookies,
| don't eat the cookies! Ridiculous.
| elwell wrote:
| Misread the title as a suggestion to not exercise!
| jameslk wrote:
| > In 2007, the American psychologist Roy Baumeister put forward
| what has become the most influential psychological model of self-
| control. His strength model likens willpower to a muscle.
|
| Ego depletion, the premise this article is based upon, has had a
| lot of issues with reproducibility:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_...
| yamrzou wrote:
| The article is not based on that premise, it is proposing an
| alternative model instead: "the process model of self-control".
| dboreham wrote:
| The Big Lebowski doctrine.
| austincheney wrote:
| If you narrowly define willpower as impulse control the article
| and many comments here are spot on, but that's not what willpower
| is.
|
| Willpower is better defined as _presence_. More specifically it
| is a knowledge of _self_ in the present. For example high
| willpower in the cerebellum allows awareness without a separate
| cognitive effort of where are your hands and feet are right now
| and what they are doing.
|
| Impulse control in the cognitive sense of desire regulation
| suggested by the article is a limited example of cognitive self-
| awareness and possibly thought of as deliberation. In that sense
| impulse control is just one of many benefits of increased
| willpower.
|
| Increased willpower has many benefits from increased motor-
| coordination, increased effectiveness of interpersonal
| engagement, career management, and even data/trend analysis.
| Willpower is perhaps the defining characteristic of perceived
| intelligence bias in the absence of a formal intelligence
| measure.
|
| See _volition_
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volition_(psychology)
| djur wrote:
| How is "high willpower in the cerebellum" measured?
| asimovfan wrote:
| What is mindfulness (smrti)? It is non-forgetting by the mind
| (cetas) with regard to the object experienced. Its function is
| non-distraction.
|
| - Asanga, from Abhidharmasamuccaya
| arkanciscan wrote:
| the eighteenth-century essayist Samuel Johnson. When a friend
| urged him " to take a little wine," Dr. Johnson explained, "I
| can't drink a little , child; therefore I never touch it.
| Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult."
| aaronchall wrote:
| > Look on the bright side, at least it was fat-free milk.
|
| This seems like a bad presumption. I suspect skim milk may have
| lead our hypothetical binger to drink more of it and eat more
| cookies.
|
| Whole milk is known to be more filling. [1] And I believe it's
| the healthier option:
|
| > In the past, whole milk was considered to be unhealthy because
| of its saturated fat content, but recent research does not
| support this recommendation. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.eatthis.com/skim-milk-vs-whole-milk/
|
| [2] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/whole-vs-skim-
| milk#sect...
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I think one barrier to applying this advice is we tend to look
| down upon the idea of avoiding temptation, but we praise the idea
| of resisting it.
|
| Resisting temptation requires strength. So it is viewed as a
| virtue in and of itself. There is a heroic struggle. Avoiding
| temptation is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness. The
| implication is you're only avoiding it because you can't resist
| it. Almost like running away from a fight instead of facing your
| enemy.
|
| Ultimately, I think it's more constructive to employ both
| strategies. You need to develop the ability to resist temptation
| because there are times when you cannot avoid it. But there is no
| sense in sabotaging your success by dealing with temptation when
| you don't need to.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| It makes for a boring story when the married man decides to go
| home instead of hang out with the cute office girl after work,
| but it sure is the most effective way to resist temptation. But
| yes, we must also be able to resist when we find ourselves in a
| situation that we cannot avoid.
| tryauuum wrote:
| Reminds me of how people praise a person who quit smoking, but
| do not do the same for a person who never tried smoking.
|
| I wonder if it will ever change.
| searchableguy wrote:
| People absolutely praise others who never tried smoking but
| mostly when they have a person smoking in the family, read
| something about bad effect of smoking or other similar
| context.
| ribs wrote:
| Avoid staring at a big plate of cookies if I want to avoid eating
| them. This is not news.
| [deleted]
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Those who are married (and want to stay that way) follow this
| advice. If you don't want to cheat, don't put yourself in a
| situation where you will encounter temptation. Temptation is best
| beaten by not giving it a chance to tempt you.
| rdiddly wrote:
| "perhaps you'll upset your kids if you throw away the cookies" is
| given as an example of the situation being _outside your
| control_. (Thankfully this author is apparently still slaving
| away in grad school and probably doesn 't yet have time for this
| ruinous approach to raising kids.) Applying the same strategy to
| that situation is simple: Just don't let the kids know there are
| cookies in the house! Or better yet, don't buy cookies (i.e. the
| same answer as for your earlier 20-something solo non-kid-having
| Netflixing self).
| coldtea wrote:
| Even better, learn its ok to sometimes say "no" to your kids
| whims.
| NeutronStar wrote:
| Consistency is key. If the kid ask you something and you say
| no, don't change your mind later. If it was no, it should
| still be no. Same thing for yes. If you say yes then change
| your mind, your kid will probably complain.
| travisp wrote:
| Nothing in the article suggests that you should not say no to
| your kids -- it just says that your kids will be upset about
| you saying no, which is probably beyond your control and
| therefore is a factor that will weigh in your decision. Your
| response seems to me like criticizing the whole article by
| saying "Even better, learn to have the willpower to just not
| eat the damn cookies".
| scarface74 wrote:
| Speaking of a commitment device -> HN's own noprocast feature.
| I'll turn it on when I know I need to be doing something useful
| for an extended period of time or I just need to take a break. I
| can still read stories on my RSS feed and if I really want to see
| the comments I can open a private browsing window. But, I can't
| respond.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >Research in my own lab and others suggests that, if you want to
| improve your self-control, what you should do instead is focus on
| proactively reducing, rather than reactively overpowering
| temptation. Fortunately, there are several ways and opportunities
| to do this.
|
| Am I the only one who has, many times, encountered people who say
| "I don't buy junk food because if I do I'll end up eating it?"
|
| This is one of my gripes with psychology articles/self help
| books. So so many topics are simple 'revelations' that many of us
| have figured out by the time we are 20. Can't eat a cookie if you
| don't have any cookies.
|
| I've read some good psychology books ("Thinking fast and slow"
| was great), but most of the others I've read I could have have
| read the one page summary and realized I don't need to read it.
| labster wrote:
| > This is one of my gripes with psychology articles/self help
| books. So so many topics are simple 'revelations' that many of
| us have figured out by the time we are 20. Can't eat a cookie
| if you don't have any cookies.
|
| I recall Scott Alexander talking about this on one of the SSC
| posts -- can't remember which -- about the fact that people
| miss developmental milestones for reasons. And you can ask the
| question: What developmental milestones am I missing? Or: which
| cognitive tools do I need for my toolbox?
|
| It's good to teach things that "you should already know",
| because maybe you're one of today's lucky 10000.
| dreeves wrote:
| Voila:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-
| mil...
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| afarrell wrote:
| > many of us
|
| But not all. What is condescending to one is a necessary
| insight to another. Personally, I am very grateful to people
| who are willing to say obvious things.
|
| I also occasionally re-listen to the audio of self-help books
| in order to remember things I learned which are simple yet
| hard.
| I_complete_me wrote:
| I like this comment. It seems to me that we _do_ forget some
| of our learnt wisdom and to be reminded of things we 'know'
| that we may have forgotten is a very human and therefore
| valuable thing. Maybe the purpose of the whole oral tradition
| - but I'm out of my depth here. The lyrics of a song (from
| the seventies?) summarize this for me - once you exclude the
| sentimental aspect: "I have a friend who's going blind, but
| he sees much better than I".
| depr wrote:
| Thinking Fast and Slow is actually pretty flawed as well. See
| https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...
| and e.g. The Bias Bias in Behavioral Economics paper by
| Gigerenzer. It turns out quite a lot of these "biases" are
| actually quite useful and effective in the real world.
| PaulStatezny wrote:
| This is definitely true of the "self help" genre. A concept
| that has a real kernel of wisdom and can be expressed in a few
| pages often gets blown out of proportion into an entire
| "framework".
| minikites wrote:
| I used to be significantly overweight and the advice in the first
| box of the flow chart was the most helpful for me. I avoid buying
| tempting food items in the store to begin with and I have often
| eaten one or two cookies that have been sent to me as gifts and
| thrown the rest away so I wouldn't eat them.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Same here. When I was looking for jobs, companies would always
| tout their snack room. To me that was a huge impediment that
| I'd have to fight against every day.
| verroq wrote:
| Maybe the incentive should be extra pay for not using the
| snack room.
| toast0 wrote:
| Who wants to work for a company that tracks your usage of
| the snack room. If you're going to tie snacks to money,
| just put in a coinop snack machine (with credit card
| support, I suppose)
| sukilot wrote:
| The critical point -- which applies to packrats at well, is
| that some things have _negative_ value and are better destroyed
| than used. We know this for obvious toxins like smoke, but less
| often know this for sugar and junk gear.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I use a box that I can lock with a timer (called kitchensafe),
| which means I have no chance (except breaking the whole thing)
| to get to my cookies (in my case all kinds of sweets) after i
| set the timer (which i usually set after taking a few things).
| Really helps with exactly this type of problem. Although I had
| to buy another one for the office a few weeks ago... (I gained
| pounds during covid anyway, so it's not the be all end all..
| but it helps me)
| skinnymuch wrote:
| How did the old children marshmallow test get through to the
| final draft. It comes right before the author relates a specific
| thing to his own study. The marshmallow test original results and
| thoughts have largely been seen as incorrect. Wealth was the main
| factor. It can relate to the title, but still the incorrect info
| shouldn't be there.
| praxulus wrote:
| I don't think the claimed findings of the marshmallow test were
| relevant here, just the fact that some kids managed to avoid
| eating the marshmallow while others did not.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| The marshmallow test makes no sense to me. You're telling me I
| get one marshmallow now, or I get _one more_ if I wait 30
| minutes and have to sit here bored looking at the one
| marshmallow I could have already eaten? The reward just isn 't
| there. It seems like it measures kids who want to please the
| researcher.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It seems like it measures kids who want to please the
| researcher_
|
| There are the kids who immediately eat the marshmallow. And
| then there are those who try not to eat it and fail. The
| latter is relevant. The former is not.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The kids do have to sit in the room whether or not they eat
| the first marshmallow, but I agree that there are quite a few
| explanations for what it's measuring beyond self-control.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So the incentive isn't even something like two marshmallows?
| detaro wrote:
| But the article just referenced some techniques the children in
| the test used, not the claims derived about their
| characteristics, which is the discredited part AFAIK?
| dreeves wrote:
| To elaborate on that: one interpretation of the Stanford
| Marshmallow Experiment is that learning to trust adults is a
| key predictor for success in life.
|
| Recall the experiment: kids who resisted gobbling the
| marshmallow in order to earn 2 marshmallows went on to be
| awesomer adults. The original explanation is that kids with the
| ability to delay gratification (or who come up with beeminder-y
| tricks to distract themselves from the tempting marshmallow)
| will be served well by that skill the rest of their lives.
|
| But another explanation -
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011090655.h...
| - is that those seemingly impulsive kids are just the kids who
| don't trust the adults who promise the 2nd marshmallow. They're
| like "yeah, I've heard that before" and gobble while the
| gobbling's good. In other words, they're not failing to delay
| gratification, they're responding to the situation perfectly
| rationally based on their past interactions with adults. To put
| it overly dramatically: flaking out on your kids ruins their
| lives!
|
| (I'm not sure how much credence to give that interpretation,
| and suspect that there's truth in the original interpretation
| too. But it kind of feels right to me. Flaking out on anyone is
| really bad. But kids especially.)
|
| PS: More recent partial replication of the Marshmallow Test:
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618761661
| beamatronic wrote:
| If I'm understanding this correctly, you need to control your
| self-control.
| oliverobscure wrote:
| I don't think it's "control" so much, just "be aware" of it.
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