I’ll try to summarize the positions by taking (IMO) the most representative paragraph from each one.
1) Yvain:
The technique I decided to test was to write out an oath detailing exactly what I wanted to do, list in nauseating detail all of the conditions under which I could or could not be released from this oath, and then bind myself to it, with the knowledge that if I succeeded I would have a great method of self-improvement and if I failed I would be dooming myself to a life of laziness forever.
2) Z_M_Davis:
Rather than setting explicit measurable goals, I try to continually remind myself that every minute and every dime is precious, and every minute and every dime that you don’t spend doing the best thing you can possibly be doing is a mark of sin upon your soul.
3) pjeby:
If you explicitly contemplate all the things that might come up, and decide what you’ll do in each case, then you are mentally linking your “interest” to those contexts, along with a preferred behavior… thus reducing the willpower load required to make those decisions when the time comes, and giving that “interest” a larger say in the bargaining that occurs at that point in time.
Now we need to understand what implications those positions have and where they contradict.
Now we need to understand what implications those positions have and where they contradict.
They don’t contradict, they’re simply methods with different tradeoffs for different people. My statements are aimed at people who don’t enjoy being under pressure; Davis and Yvain’s methods will work well for people who thrive under pressure. Yvain’s method has some crossover with mine, in that I predict he will be far less successful with an oath that does not involve the contemplation process. That is, I attribute the majority of his success to the pre-oath contemplation, and very little to the oath itself, or the penalties attached to it. (And I consider the attachment of penalties to be dangerous as well as unnecessary.)
A next step in setting up a decent experiment would be to select 4 groups (1, 2, 3 + Control) of people randomly. To give findings most applicable to rational people, we can just as well select within LW.
Another step: Select a common task the utility of which is perceived as high by most people on LW, yet which is seldomly performed.
Proposal: During two weeks, run for (at least) 10 Minutes on three of each four consecutive days.
Ideally, the experiment would then continue with another task, but switching group members. This improves the experiment via control for different motivation between participants. Also trying a different task gives us a chance to see if there is a general method or whether the method must be selected specific to the task.
If anybody is willing to participate in this experiment, I am willing to coordinate.
If somebody else is willing (and more qualified) to coordinate, I hereby enlist as participant.
Qualification: I am a computer scientist, I have one contact to a psychology researcher, I feel competent in statistics. Then again I lost 20$ (of 100$) over 3 month in prediction markets.
No, no. You skipped a step. You didn’t actually think hard about the implications of the three positions or work out any stark contradictions between them. If you’d done that, you’d have thought up multiple small focused experiments to resolve each individual area of contradiction. Instead you hastily propose one big complex setup that looks more like a contest between three self-help techniques. Whatever the outcome, it won’t bring us any closer to the correct constructive theory of human motivation. Yvain has eloquently described the same problem in the thread nearby.
No, but a setup which does not try to understand more deeply which parts of which theory contribute to its success still gives pretty useful results about which approach has the highest expected utility.
I’ll try to summarize the positions by taking (IMO) the most representative paragraph from each one.
1) Yvain:
2) Z_M_Davis:
3) pjeby:
Now we need to understand what implications those positions have and where they contradict.
They don’t contradict, they’re simply methods with different tradeoffs for different people. My statements are aimed at people who don’t enjoy being under pressure; Davis and Yvain’s methods will work well for people who thrive under pressure. Yvain’s method has some crossover with mine, in that I predict he will be far less successful with an oath that does not involve the contemplation process. That is, I attribute the majority of his success to the pre-oath contemplation, and very little to the oath itself, or the penalties attached to it. (And I consider the attachment of penalties to be dangerous as well as unnecessary.)
A next step in setting up a decent experiment would be to select 4 groups (1, 2, 3 + Control) of people randomly. To give findings most applicable to rational people, we can just as well select within LW.
Another step: Select a common task the utility of which is perceived as high by most people on LW, yet which is seldomly performed.
Proposal: During two weeks, run for (at least) 10 Minutes on three of each four consecutive days.
Ideally, the experiment would then continue with another task, but switching group members. This improves the experiment via control for different motivation between participants. Also trying a different task gives us a chance to see if there is a general method or whether the method must be selected specific to the task.
If anybody is willing to participate in this experiment, I am willing to coordinate. If somebody else is willing (and more qualified) to coordinate, I hereby enlist as participant.
Qualification: I am a computer scientist, I have one contact to a psychology researcher, I feel competent in statistics. Then again I lost 20$ (of 100$) over 3 month in prediction markets.
The fact that I’d be participating in an experiment for SCIENCE! would motivate me overwhelmingly more than any of those techniques.
No, no. You skipped a step. You didn’t actually think hard about the implications of the three positions or work out any stark contradictions between them. If you’d done that, you’d have thought up multiple small focused experiments to resolve each individual area of contradiction. Instead you hastily propose one big complex setup that looks more like a contest between three self-help techniques. Whatever the outcome, it won’t bring us any closer to the correct constructive theory of human motivation. Yvain has eloquently described the same problem in the thread nearby.
Sorry if this sounded harsh.
No, but a setup which does not try to understand more deeply which parts of which theory contribute to its success still gives pretty useful results about which approach has the highest expected utility.
So, are we going to get this experiment running or not?
Do you have a better proposal?
I would also join, but we should take Cousin_It’s suggestions. And we should send our ideas to some psychologists for feedback.