What’s the difference between an urge and a want?
Mayank Goel
Karma: 10
Interesting example—and this will apply for all dilemmas (a specific want isn’t clear) - such as leaving a job/marriage.
I feel an aspect there could be that of the “social default”. The 14 year old both a) wants to ask out their crush; b) maintain their social standing—and has lots of variables surrounding both. Empathizing with that person—if they scour to find their internal wants, they can realize they just really want peace and asking out the crush isn’t worth it, or that they just want fulfillment and apart from an amorphous blob of fear/social rejection/death, they should ask out their crush.
The crux of my argument is, fear is a negative desire, a positive desire stronger than that (jumping in front of the bullet for a loved one) will still dominate. Dilemmas are situations where a single desire may not dominate, so maybe a discovery of priorities are in order.
I want a glass of water/I want to write this comment/I want to listen to a song/I don’t want to solve global peace, but I want global peace to be solved.
“A heroin addict wants heroin” is the most straightforward way I can define want.
> rather than simply not really wanting the thing
Consider how an heroin addict will find some way or the other to get heroin, which goes to show that “want” is very strongly linked to getting things done.
So given how you described things, let’s say you (try to) do nothing. Inevitably you will feel the discomfort and urge to work, or a discomfort/in a form of cynicism/awkwardness. This should be “processed” to come to concrete practical reasons why you do X, rather than because you should. I am trying to suggest a method to get at this process.
> Procrastination is the broad fuzzy description of a phenomena where a person says he wants to do X, but does not do X.
By “person says” I mean “person signals” (internally or externally)
> Or that parts of him want to do X, but other parts don’t want to do the elements that make X maximally likely.
Sure, and that multi-agent behavior will have negotiations and save outward behavior. It can be reluctant signaling—but the fact that there are signals mean an activation threshold has been reached
This applies to all those descriptions—In-fact the last of them “X is what they want to be seen as wanting, but they don’t actually want it. ” is exactly the point I am making.> Defining “want” as “what you pursue wholeheartedly and consistently” is also fine, but useless.
I think it can be very useful, specially if you also want to believe and act like “I do whatever I want”
> The solution (of integrating this self-knowledge and identifying/creating more consistent wants) is only ever achieved by a small subset of humans, and often takes decades of practice.
There’s a spectra of skill, so even some practice can give you noob gains. “The solution” is similar to “winning” in rationality—and there’s nothing else to do in life—so it is as good a goal as any.
I like your suggestion, gives me the same vibes as the adage of flipping a coin for a difficult decision because you will know what you subconsciously want when the coin’s in the air. Maybe I should have written a longer article instead of slightly aiming for aesthetics—but I will argue that all of such insights—eventually converge to all actions feeling default.