“The annoying thing here is that I believe the only difference between me and another task doer in this situation is that I have more accurate beliefs, or I have a higher belief threshold for making claims (or something similar, like that I only use statement for communicating beliefs and not for socially enforcing a commitment to myself).”
As someone who was in this situation with Alex recently (wanting a commitment from him, in order to make plans with other people that relied on this initial commitment), I think there’s maybe an additional thing in my psychology and not in Alex’s which is about self-forcing.
I’m careful about situations where I’m making a very strong commitment to something, because it means that if I’ve planned the timing wrong, I’ll get the thing done but with high self-sacrifice. I’m committing to skipping sleeping, or fun hangouts I otherwise had planned, or relaxing activities, to get the thing done by the date I said it’d be done. I’m capable and willing to force myself to do this, if the other person wants a commitment from me enough. It’s not 100% certain I’ll succeed—e.g. I might be hit by a car—but I’m certain enough of success that people would expect me to succeed barring an emergency, which is mostly what I expect from other people when they’re for-real-for-real committing to something. S
o when I’m asking someone to for-real-for-real commit to me, I’m asking “are you ready to do self-sacrifice if you don’t get it done by this date, barring an emergency. It’s fine if it’s a later date, I just want the certainty of being able to build on this plan”. And I do think there’s a bunch of different kinds of commitments in day-to-day life, where I make looser commitments all the time, but I do have a category for “for-real-for-real commitment”, and will track other people’s failures to meet my expectations when I believe they’ve made a “for-real-for-real” commitment to me. I might track this more carefully than other people do though—feels like it kinda rhymes with autism and high conscientiousness, maybe also high-performance environments but idk?
Anyway, this all might be the same thing as “I only use statement for communicating beliefs and not for socially enforcing a commitment to myself”. I’m not sure I’d use exactly the the “social enforcing a commitment to myself” phrase; in my mind, it feels like a social commitment and also feels like “I’m now putting my personal integrity on the line, since I’m making a for-real-for-real commitment, so I’d better do what I said I would, even if no one’s looking”.
Amusingly, I think Alex and I are both using self-integrity here, but one hypothesis is that maybe I’m very willing and able to force myself to do things, and this makes up the difference with respect to what concepts we’re referring to with respect to (strong) commitment?
Always fun getting unduly detailed with very specific pieces of models :P.
Thanks Alex :). Comment just on this section:
As someone who was in this situation with Alex recently (wanting a commitment from him, in order to make plans with other people that relied on this initial commitment), I think there’s maybe an additional thing in my psychology and not in Alex’s which is about self-forcing.
I’m careful about situations where I’m making a very strong commitment to something, because it means that if I’ve planned the timing wrong, I’ll get the thing done but with high self-sacrifice. I’m committing to skipping sleeping, or fun hangouts I otherwise had planned, or relaxing activities, to get the thing done by the date I said it’d be done. I’m capable and willing to force myself to do this, if the other person wants a commitment from me enough. It’s not 100% certain I’ll succeed—e.g. I might be hit by a car—but I’m certain enough of success that people would expect me to succeed barring an emergency, which is mostly what I expect from other people when they’re for-real-for-real committing to something. S
o when I’m asking someone to for-real-for-real commit to me, I’m asking “are you ready to do self-sacrifice if you don’t get it done by this date, barring an emergency. It’s fine if it’s a later date, I just want the certainty of being able to build on this plan”. And I do think there’s a bunch of different kinds of commitments in day-to-day life, where I make looser commitments all the time, but I do have a category for “for-real-for-real commitment”, and will track other people’s failures to meet my expectations when I believe they’ve made a “for-real-for-real” commitment to me. I might track this more carefully than other people do though—feels like it kinda rhymes with autism and high conscientiousness, maybe also high-performance environments but idk?
Anyway, this all might be the same thing as “I only use statement for communicating beliefs and not for socially enforcing a commitment to myself”. I’m not sure I’d use exactly the the “social enforcing a commitment to myself” phrase; in my mind, it feels like a social commitment and also feels like “I’m now putting my personal integrity on the line, since I’m making a for-real-for-real commitment, so I’d better do what I said I would, even if no one’s looking”.
Amusingly, I think Alex and I are both using self-integrity here, but one hypothesis is that maybe I’m very willing and able to force myself to do things, and this makes up the difference with respect to what concepts we’re referring to with respect to (strong) commitment?
Always fun getting unduly detailed with very specific pieces of models :P.