non-coercion
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6 linked references
December 4th, 2022
- 9th COMPLICE THREAD
twitter.com/CompliceGoals/status/1599540414239105024
- scraps
- coercive motivation is sort of the opposite of goal-directed motivation
- in the sense that the latter is in touch with whys
- in some sense coercive = extrinsic, goal-directed = intrinsic
- although self-coercion could seem "intrinsic" because it's internal
- and.... yeah
- coercive ~= awayness
- even with rewards, subtly
- damn I started writing this thread and on revisiting my towardsness/awayness post, I feel like it actually says most of what I want to say
- BUT! it doesn't say it in the form of "what's the deal with coercion?"
- coercion comes up later
- meta-commentary on my experience of writing this so far... feeling kinda stuck
- I've gone kinda deep into the cake metaphor/example
- this is okay—something about the fruits of one's labour... and having a concrete example is good
- but I also want to say the more structural things, maybe before/instead of starting/continuing with the example
- thread draft
- one main problem with coercion is that it disconnects what you're doing from why you're doing it
- whether reward or punishment, whether internal or external, coercion involves applying some force to make something happen
this is disconnected from our intrinsic motivation to experience doing the thing or to experience the natural results of doing the thing - 1. if you bake a cake, and then you enjoy the cake, that's not a reward—that's the outcome of baking the cake
2. if you try to get good grades so that your parents will buy you a cake, that's a reward - the distinction is tough, bc in some sense the 2nd cake is still a consequence
but note that however relevant/irrelevant, it's *arbitrary*: your parents are the arbiters of whether you get the cake, whether or not you get good grades
vs in 1 you NEED to bake the cake to eat it - why do your parents want you to get good grades?
maybe they want you to learn things.
maybe they want you to get into a good college.
maybe they would be embarrassed if you didn't and they haven't really thought further than that!
November 12th, 2022
- non-coercion - it seems to me that in some sense what Beeminder is doing is marking the reality of the passage of time, with reference to this particular area of your life... and yeah, spreading the consequences out so that you have a tighter feedback loop made of something real
June 21st, 2022
- something related to non-coercion & shoulds
- sometimes you need to do a thing, and it is in fact timely and only you can do it, but it's not a very good fit for your state of mind or something like that
- so there's a bit of... not exactly will per se, but friction towards doing it, and the friction isn't per se coercive but it can be less flowy
- sometimes external should doesn't match internal state, and this results in coercion
- but if you in fact do understand why the thing needs to happen, then even tho there's a state mismatch, it can still happen cleanly once you dialogue stuff
- (otherwise you get but I don't wanna)
- eg Jess needing to go move her car, and that being clearly priority in terms of external urgency, but not a good match for her state of mind
- but I also made that more flowy by finding a win-win where I cooked dinner while she was out
- (a win-win in part because it created a context for me to listen to a John Vervaeke convo I wanted to listen to)