Well… either you’re laughably wrong, or you’re only right in the sense that your “if you have no emotional angst” conditional very rarely applies.
Your “additional constraints” and “laziness and stupidity” are sounding a lot like what I was calling “motivational perversity”.
Yes. I’m trying to explain motivational perversity. Your hypothesis seems to be “People evade stuff. If they said ‘okay, no more evading’ and tried really hard to do stuff that should work, stuff would work”. I call that “lazy and stupid”. My other hypothesis is “People try to do stuff, but invisible obstacle deflect them; it looks like they’re evading solutions, but actually it’s more like sliding off them”.
If I misunderstood and you don’t predict “no more evading ” will help, what is “motivational perversity” doing?
I certainly don’t expect that saying “no more evading” will generally work. The real perversity is that you know that you’re evading, but you’re still doing it anyway. Trying really hard to do stuff won’t necessarily work, even when actually doing the known right stuff will. You’re deviating from the known solution in some what that isn’t apparent to you.
Sliding off isn’t a bad way to put it. You start down the path, but find yourself diverted again and again off the path. Are you hitting obstacles, and taking the wrong path? Just not persevering? Did the will to execute wane? Did the will to evade wax?
I’ll give you some examples. Maybe you start bemoaning some injustice in the situation. Or obsessing over what might happen. Or going into speculative analysis cycles. Or optimization cycles. Or you’re leaving some step out because it “shouldn’t” matter, whether the shouldn’t is epistemic or moral.
Okay, but then what to do about it? “Motivational perversity” seems to be doing useful predictive work—namely, that “try harder” is a good solution. If our best description is “people fail to do stuff despite trying really really hard, and we don’t really know why”—what are we even doing placing the source of the failure in “motivation” rather than “executive function” or “modelling and planning” or “sharing control between conscious and subconscious modules” or even “executing motor actions”?
Hmmm, it’s been a while, but someone pointed me here again, so here goes.
I placed it on motivation because the modeling and planning is easy, if the problem isn’t yours.
What to do about it? Talk to someone else. I went to counseling for a year. One of the mistakes I made, and the counselor made, was never just having him suggest a solution. He’s all busy “not directing” me, when in fact what I needed was perspective. Going round and round in my head wasn’t getting anywhere.
Eventually I think I found some of my motivational perversion, some of my unacknowledged beliefs and choices that explained my bad behavior.
Well… either you’re laughably wrong, or you’re only right in the sense that your “if you have no emotional angst” conditional very rarely applies.
Yes. I’m trying to explain motivational perversity. Your hypothesis seems to be “People evade stuff. If they said ‘okay, no more evading’ and tried really hard to do stuff that should work, stuff would work”. I call that “lazy and stupid”. My other hypothesis is “People try to do stuff, but invisible obstacle deflect them; it looks like they’re evading solutions, but actually it’s more like sliding off them”.
If I misunderstood and you don’t predict “no more evading ” will help, what is “motivational perversity” doing?
I certainly don’t expect that saying “no more evading” will generally work. The real perversity is that you know that you’re evading, but you’re still doing it anyway. Trying really hard to do stuff won’t necessarily work, even when actually doing the known right stuff will. You’re deviating from the known solution in some what that isn’t apparent to you.
Sliding off isn’t a bad way to put it. You start down the path, but find yourself diverted again and again off the path. Are you hitting obstacles, and taking the wrong path? Just not persevering? Did the will to execute wane? Did the will to evade wax?
I’ll give you some examples. Maybe you start bemoaning some injustice in the situation. Or obsessing over what might happen. Or going into speculative analysis cycles. Or optimization cycles. Or you’re leaving some step out because it “shouldn’t” matter, whether the shouldn’t is epistemic or moral.
Okay, but then what to do about it? “Motivational perversity” seems to be doing useful predictive work—namely, that “try harder” is a good solution. If our best description is “people fail to do stuff despite trying really really hard, and we don’t really know why”—what are we even doing placing the source of the failure in “motivation” rather than “executive function” or “modelling and planning” or “sharing control between conscious and subconscious modules” or even “executing motor actions”?
Hmmm, it’s been a while, but someone pointed me here again, so here goes.
I placed it on motivation because the modeling and planning is easy, if the problem isn’t yours.
What to do about it? Talk to someone else. I went to counseling for a year. One of the mistakes I made, and the counselor made, was never just having him suggest a solution. He’s all busy “not directing” me, when in fact what I needed was perspective. Going round and round in my head wasn’t getting anywhere.
Eventually I think I found some of my motivational perversion, some of my unacknowledged beliefs and choices that explained my bad behavior.