I wasn’t sure I understood the difference, so I asked Sonnet 4 and it replied:
Yes, there’s a meaningful distinction here that’s worth understanding. The difference lies in timeframe, specificity, and the nature of desire versus direction.
“What do I want?” often captures immediate desires, feelings, or impulses. It’s more about what feels appealing or satisfying right now. For example, you might want to sleep in, eat pizza, avoid a difficult conversation, or buy something that catches your eye.
“What’s my goal?” is more about intentional direction and longer-term outcomes. Goals are typically more structured and forward-looking. They represent what you’re working toward, even if it requires doing things you don’t particularly want to do in the moment.
I suppose this is related to, if not exactly the same as, wanting vs liking? Or am I even more confused than I realise?
Sonnet’s description is basically how I’d describe it. It’s somewhat related to wanting/liking but I don’t think I’d particularly emphasize those as a referrent here.
A reason to ask “what’s my goal” is to help prompt “what combinations of actions would help achieve this?”, some reasons to ask “what do I want?” is:
a sanity check against lost-purpose-goals. If you’re pursuing a mistaken goal or one someone else told you to pursue, there may not be a ground truth for “is this even a good goal?”. But, you can (hopefully) tell whether you actually want something, and if you notice you don’t actually want it, you might want to check in with “okay… what do I want?”
if you spend your whole life doing stuff you don’t actually want, you probably turn into a hollow shell-of-a-person, and I think there’s something, like, “nutritious” about making sure to do some things you want on a regular basis.
I wasn’t sure I understood the difference, so I asked Sonnet 4 and it replied:
I suppose this is related to, if not exactly the same as, wanting vs liking? Or am I even more confused than I realise?
Sonnet’s description is basically how I’d describe it. It’s somewhat related to wanting/liking but I don’t think I’d particularly emphasize those as a referrent here.
A reason to ask “what’s my goal” is to help prompt “what combinations of actions would help achieve this?”, some reasons to ask “what do I want?” is:
a sanity check against lost-purpose-goals. If you’re pursuing a mistaken goal or one someone else told you to pursue, there may not be a ground truth for “is this even a good goal?”. But, you can (hopefully) tell whether you actually want something, and if you notice you don’t actually want it, you might want to check in with “okay… what do I want?”
if you spend your whole life doing stuff you don’t actually want, you probably turn into a hollow shell-of-a-person, and I think there’s something, like, “nutritious” about making sure to do some things you want on a regular basis.