February 26th, 2022
- fascinating etymology—the word "wish" comes from a root *wen- which means "to desire/strive" , but that root is not the root of "want" which relates to "wane" and is about a deficiency or lack
- although *wen- is the root of "wont"
- and venus!
- from a Intend user, re the commitment contracts feature - relates to towardsness & awayness & procrastination
- > You bring an interesting point up about how we want to perceive our motivations for goal completion. There's a podcast with Rich Roll and Andrew Huberman, and in it Dr Huberman states, that, to the body, it doesn't matter how we are motivated (either by passion or pain of losing money - which is another aspect of motivation in that podcast, Humberman goes on to state that there are two different types of procrastination (hopefully I'm correct on that) one is anxious/fearful the other would be hypo-aroused. If that's true, then the latter type would find it more advantageous to use extrinsic motivation.
- the two different types of procrastination seem like a vital component for any model of akrasia & commitment contracts
- although I guess I think in some cases the way Beeminder operates is that people have anxiety around school so they get school done, but unless they also generate anxiety around making sure to hang out with friends they they just become socially isolated, or whatever 😅
- like, someone might even already be getting their homework done due to the inherent anxiety of grades & deadlines
- but they put off hanging out with friends unless they beemind it
- (the podcast btw seems to be Rich's podcast, interviewing Huberman, not an episode of Huberman's podcast)
- #2tweet judgment/contempt is one way that distrust shows up when it hasn't been able to be welcomed as just distrust
- judgment/contempt is one way that distrust shows up when it hasn't been able to be welcomed as just distrust
- incentives are a thing, but goodharting is also a thing. if you try to create an incentive to X, you can only ever create an incentive to appear to be doing X. which will sometimes correlate with actual X, but will also correlate with deception (including self-deception) & avoidance, particularly when X is difficult or people don't know how to do it.
- but non-created incentives don't work like this, for the most part. I assume you'd agree I have an incentive to eat. pretending to eat won't satisfy my hunger. as long as I'm steering by my actual hunger, I need to actually eat in order to solve my problem. no other incentives are needed to get me to eat, unless I've gotten majorly tangled up in some way, and if so, it's probably better for my health to get me back in touch with my own appetite rather than to layer on more external incentives.
- likewise, I have an incentive to figure out how to make sense of what's going on in my mind and in the world, because it feels good to understand what's going on. this incentivizes reading, meditating, etc, and while it can goodhart somewhat it's at least directly tracking whether I'm succeeding (as far as I can tell) in making sense of things. whereas if someone tries to get me to read or meditate or whatever, it loses track with why I might want to do those things.
- it's not to say that external incentives don't matter—they absolutely do
- eg a house that has a bunch of cheetos and milk chocolate on the counter probably has worse external incentives than the same house without those snacks there
- but removing the snacks is a very gentle nudge, compared to most other attempts to create incentives
- which are designed towards controlling behavior rather than just allowing people to do whatever they feel like but in one context rather than another
- and these incentives will inevitably goodhart
- (for people unfamiliar with goodhart's law)
- "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
- (quoting that it becomes more clear that the "removing snacks" incentive-sculpting doesn't actually create targets, which is why it doesn't goodhart. although if "ensure no bad snacks" became a target, that would absolutely goodhart)