There’s a familiar story—maybe you’ve heard it—a story about a proud young man who came to Socrates asking for knowledge. He walked up to the muscular philosopher and said, “O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge.”
Socrates led the young man through the streets of the town—down to the sea—and chest deep into water. Then he asked, “What do you want?”
“Knowledge, O wise Socrates,” said the young man with a smile.
Socrates put his strong hands on the man’s shoulders and pushed him under. Thirty seconds later Socrates let him up. “What do you want?” he asked again.
“Knowledge,” the young man sputtered, “O great and wise Socrates.”
Socrates pushed him under again. Thirty seconds passed, thirty-five. Forty. Socrates let him up. The man was gasping. What do you want, young man?”
Between heavy, heaving breaths the fellow wheezed, “Knowledge, O wise and wonderful...”
Socrates jammed him under again. Forty seconds passed. Fifty. “What do you want?”
“Air!” he screeched. “I need air!”
“When you want knowledge as you have just wanted air, then you will have knowledge.”
Can you choose to try harder than you actually are? Isn’t that like choosing to believe?
I always thought you either believe or you don’t. We don’t have a choice in the matter. Do we?
Assuming freedom of will in the first place, why should you not be able to choose to try harder? Doesn’t that just mean allocating more effort to the activity at hand?
Did you mean to ask “Can you choose to do better than your best?” ? That would indeed seem similar to the doubtable idea of selecting beliefs arbitrarily. By definition of “best”, you can not do better than it. But that can be ‘circumvented’ by introducing different points in time: Let’s say at t=1 your muscle capacity enables you to lift up to 10 kg. You can not actually choose to lift more. You can try, but would fail. But you can choose to do weight training, with the effect that until t=2 you have raised your lifting power to 20 kg. So you can do better (at t=2) than your best (at t=1).
But Eliezer’s point was a different one, to my understanding: He suggested that when you say (and more or less believe) that you “try your best”, you are wrong automatically. (But only lying to the extent of your awareness of this wrongness.) Because you do better when setting out to “succeed” instead of to “try”; because these different mindsets influence your chances of success.
About belief choice: Believing is not a simply choosable action like any other. But I can imagine ways to alter one’s own beliefs (indirectly), at least in theory:
Influencing reality: one example is the aforementioned weightlifting: That is a device for changing the belief “I am unable to lift 20 kg”—by changing the actual state of reality over time.
Reframing a topic, concentrating on different (perspectives on) parts of the available evidence, could alter your conclusion.
Self-fulfilling prophecy effects, when you are aware of them, create cases where you may be able to select your belief.
Quoting Henry Ford:
If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
If you believe this quote, then you can select whether to believe in yourself, since you know you will be right either way.
(Possibly a person who has developed a certain kind of mastery over her own mind can spontaneously program herself to believe something.)
(More examples of manipulating one’s own beliefs, there in the form of “expectancy”, can be found under “Optimizing Optimism” in How to Beat Procrastination. You can also Google “change beliefs” for self-help approaches to the question. Beware of pseudoscience, though.)
There’s a familiar story—maybe you’ve heard it—a story about a proud young man who came to Socrates asking for knowledge. He walked up to the muscular philosopher and said, “O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge.”
Socrates led the young man through the streets of the town—down to the sea—and chest deep into water. Then he asked, “What do you want?”
“Knowledge, O wise Socrates,” said the young man with a smile.
Socrates put his strong hands on the man’s shoulders and pushed him under. Thirty seconds later Socrates let him up. “What do you want?” he asked again.
“Knowledge,” the young man sputtered, “O great and wise Socrates.”
Socrates pushed him under again. Thirty seconds passed, thirty-five. Forty. Socrates let him up. The man was gasping. What do you want, young man?”
Between heavy, heaving breaths the fellow wheezed, “Knowledge, O wise and wonderful...”
Socrates jammed him under again. Forty seconds passed. Fifty. “What do you want?”
“Air!” he screeched. “I need air!”
“When you want knowledge as you have just wanted air, then you will have knowledge.”
Can you choose to try harder than you actually are? Isn’t that like choosing to believe? I always thought you either believe or you don’t. We don’t have a choice in the matter. Do we?
[ TL;DR keywords in bold ]
Assuming freedom of will in the first place, why should you not be able to choose to try harder? Doesn’t that just mean allocating more effort to the activity at hand?
Did you mean to ask “Can you choose to do better than your best?” ? That would indeed seem similar to the doubtable idea of selecting beliefs arbitrarily. By definition of “best”, you can not do better than it. But that can be ‘circumvented’ by introducing different points in time: Let’s say at t=1 your muscle capacity enables you to lift up to 10 kg. You can not actually choose to lift more. You can try, but would fail. But you can choose to do weight training, with the effect that until t=2 you have raised your lifting power to 20 kg. So you can do better (at t=2) than your best (at t=1).
But Eliezer’s point was a different one, to my understanding: He suggested that when you say (and more or less believe) that you “try your best”, you are wrong automatically. (But only lying to the extent of your awareness of this wrongness.) Because you do better when setting out to “succeed” instead of to “try”; because these different mindsets influence your chances of success.
About belief choice: Believing is not a simply choosable action like any other. But I can imagine ways to alter one’s own beliefs (indirectly), at least in theory:
Influencing reality: one example is the aforementioned weightlifting: That is a device for changing the belief “I am unable to lift 20 kg”—by changing the actual state of reality over time.
Reframing a topic, concentrating on different (perspectives on) parts of the available evidence, could alter your conclusion.
Self-fulfilling prophecy effects, when you are aware of them, create cases where you may be able to select your belief. Quoting Henry Ford:
If you believe this quote, then you can select whether to believe in yourself, since you know you will be right either way.
(Possibly a person who has developed a certain kind of mastery over her own mind can spontaneously program herself to believe something.)
(More examples of manipulating one’s own beliefs, there in the form of “expectancy”, can be found under “Optimizing Optimism” in How to Beat Procrastination. You can also Google “change beliefs” for self-help approaches to the question. Beware of pseudoscience, though.)