Maybe we don’t want specific things in a consistent way. Generalizing from that to we don’t want things seems premature. Maybe we just want the taste of tea and are willing to adapt that desire to whatever sort of tea cup we see moment by moment. I would say those recent posts have explored the degree to which we have goals, not effectively opened the question of whether or not we have them.
At the very least goals which we write down and tell others about have some impetus in our lives, through social reinforcement, commitment effects, and the capability to enlist others and build structures which cause those goals to be expressed more powerfully.
Though it seems our brains might not be very good at having explicit goals in useful ways.
Maybe we don’t want specific things in a consistent way. Generalizing from that to we don’t want things seems premature. Maybe we just want the taste of tea and are willing to adapt that desire to whatever sort of tea cup we see moment by moment. I would say those recent posts have explored the degree to which we have goals, not effectively opened the question of whether or not we have them.
At the very least goals which we write down and tell others about have some impetus in our lives, through social reinforcement, commitment effects, and the capability to enlist others and build structures which cause those goals to be expressed more powerfully.
Though it seems our brains might not be very good at having explicit goals in useful ways.