15 ms·

As the society advances and problems are solved for us, we are left with the most central core problem, ourselves. Related to concepts like 'agency', 'impulse

As the society advances and problems are solved for us, we are left with the most central core problem, ourselves. Related to concepts like 'agency', 'impulse control', 'willpower', 'restraint', 'free will', 'delayed gratification' are connected to our status and self image. If you think humans as AI systems, we are facing issues with our reward function. Short term reward seems to overrule long term planning and goals if the outside pressure is not there and we have a choice. Is this something without technical solution or can we learn to reprogram our reward function with biofeedback, brain implants, meds or application in Apple watch? I think the subject deserves a Black Mirror episode and few startups.

classified 7y ago
> If you think humans as AI systems Humans are not "AI" systems but infinitely more complex. Which is why, among other things, humans are capable of driving a car safely while "AI" is not. I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV.
- Brave-Steak 7y ago
  What makes you think we are anything more than the output of a reward function? Dopamine and other hormones function as our reward system and are so fundamental and drive effectively all of our behaviours and our learning from the moment we were born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/151/5/1978/2456493 https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/151/5/1978/2456493
  - lr4444lr 7y ago
    The fact that it disgusts him, and that you in turn might appreciate the irony of the reward system actually hating itself is pretty strong evidence that there's more to the human experience than biologically reinforced operant conditioning.
    - Brave-Steak 7y ago
      > is pretty strong evidence that there's more to the human experience than biologically reinforced operant conditioning. I'm not sure that follows. The reward system can't produce output by itself. It requires an input. Any input. It requires an environment, a context. And one of the possible outputs is, well, his point of view. But that doesn't invalidate the reward system. It just shows how unpredictable it is.
      - mewpmewp2 7y ago
        There are layers upon layers in that reward system, although everything should be explainable. So how did the reward system come to a point that it does not want to believe it will die at some point and for that reason it had to create several imaginary stories such as religion etc? I wonder if it maybe has to do with group dynamics? In order for some conscious systems to be controlled by more powerful entities they would have had to been fed delusions in order for their reward systems to be happy and not feel cheated upon. Eg reward system wants to maximize survivability and when it is controlled by other systems in power it has to be led lies that after death it will be better so all in all the reward system gets so skewed that eventually it is likely to believe any other type of delusions as well. Such as for example that itself is not a reward system and if it was it would hate itself. So in the end are all delusions defense mechanisms for that reward system to accept that things are unfair, this reward system might not be able to achieve the desired goals so it has to adapt itself? But why can't this reward system just hibernate without delusions? Edit: actually I think coming to hate itself as a reward system is part of societal pressures. Society pressures each reward system to do common good for that society and creates morals. These morals have been created in a manner that one has to be something more than a selfish creature or otherwise gets shunned so reward system will create all those thoughts in order to avoid having to face selfish desires vs societal pressures head on?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Why? That only suggests that the reward system can hate itself. It's not out of scope, much like a computer being able to self-diagnose some of its workings isn't a weird thing.
- nippoo 7y ago
  The human "reward function" is likely more complex than current AI - and not always particularly logical (though vaguely correlated to survival of your own genes!) - but it's probably naïve to assume that we're anything more complicated than a very advanced automaton trying to optimise a reward function...
  - s_kilk 7y ago
    I think it's dreadfully naive to assume there's a single, identifiable reward function.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      You can always map lots of small reward functions onto a single large one. For a fictitious example, total_reward = sin(time_of_day) × dopamine_reward + (oxytocin_reward / adrenaline_reward)
      - platz 7y ago
        How do you even add them.. it's like asking what is the utility of the statue of liberty plus the utility of NAFTA? Just because it's a mathematicians/economists wish doesn't mean it's correct. Why did the drunken man look under the streetlight for his keys? "Didn't loose them here, but that's where the light is"
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > How do you even add them.. In dollars. It's literally what currency is for. Of course there's no one set of dollar values for most items. They very much depend on a context. But in a particular, well-defined context, you can very much convert both Statue of Liberty and NAFTA to dollars and sum them up to something that makes sense in that context. > Why did the drunken man look under the streetlight for his keys? "Didn't loose them here, but that's where the light is" Well, drunk people tend to have problems calculating expected value.
- ben_w 7y ago
  I sympathise with your feelings of disgust, as I hated the idea of hypnosis and psychological research since I was a teenager. Perhaps “disgust” is the wrong word for me, as I felt understanding works take away the magic and wonder and mystery of what it means to be able to feel like I exist. I still don’t like the idea of being able to modify my own low-level preferences in a meaningful way, but I have come to accept that pretending it’s not a thing can make it unreal. (Also: AI is about as good as humans at driving cars, despite the computers in self driving cars being nowhere near as complicated as even just the bits of your brain that are involved in driving).
- INGELRII 7y ago
  > I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV. Very interesting and heavy statement to say in this context. (I think your comment should be upvoted just to bring this honest description of how feelings and self-image interact with our thinking)
  - mewpmewp2 7y ago
    Why be disgusted over something that honestly seems pretty obvious. (unless there are delusions in my logic)? What else could there be other than particles interacting with each other? And if there are particles interacting with each other how could it be anything else than a reward system? What is the alternative? Even if there was something non physical like a soul what leads decision making for that soul?
- Ensorceled 7y ago
  Ironically, disgust is part of your internal reward system.
- inscionent 7y ago
  Have you seen humans drive cars?
  - classified 7y ago
    Ha, you do have a point here, of course. But for comparison, have you seen "AI" drive cars?
  - olooney 7y ago
    Humans are capable of driving cars safely. Many people go their whole lives without ever being at fault for a single accident. Some drivers, especially professionals, practice defensive driving at avoid or preempt accidents where they would not have been at fault. My own father, for example, has been the "n+1" car in an n-car pile up on more than one occasion, as he was the only one leaving a safe distance. He avoids all distractions and pays attention to the behavior of other cars on the road. He gives advice like, "don't just look at the brake lights - look for the car to pitch forward because that means it's braking hard and you should be too." Another time I saw him avoid a serious accident even though he was in the passengers seat simply by telling the driver, who had just taken their foot off the brake after the life turned green and was about to enter the intersection, "wait, stop, that guy's going to run the red light." Note that this was before the other car had actually done so - he just noticed it was slowing down. If everyone drove like that, cars would be safer than airplanes. So it's not a cognitive issue. Almost anyone can learn to drive a car very safely, they just choose not to.
- gbrown 7y ago
  > I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV. Well we use different words for it, but I’m not sure I understand the alternative? The brain is a physical thing, and it’s (in the broader physiological/hormonal environment) making the decisions. “Reward function” sounds reductive, but obviously it’s a much more complex phenomena than all current human created AI. We’re not just minimizing a sum of squares, if that’s what you mean.
d4nt 7y ago
“The ideal timeframe to use for the reward function” is an instance of an age old question about what’s really important in life. Most people agree that taking lots of heroin and dying in a matter of months is suboptimal. Most people also agree that living a life of utter sacrifice in pursuit of some higher goal might not be good either. You might be working on something pointless. Some self interest is actually beneficial to society in general. In order to validate that you’re doing something worthwhile. It’s also debatable how to value the opportunity cost of missed fun now, against future fun. Especially if the future fun is experienced by someone else. Conscience, selfless love for our children, culture, and religion are varying levels of patch on this simple human brain chemistry. I don’t think technology adds anything fundamentally new.
- mlrtime 7y ago
  "Especially if the future fun is experienced by someone else." I'm always reminded of the commercial where the young man saves up his money and works hard so his much older self can fly first class somewhere. I always think the same, this could be some other version of himself, does it make sense to give this your future self?
  - tcbawo 7y ago
    That reminds me of a quote from Machiavelli that I recently saw on HN: "Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits should be conferred gradually, and in that way they will taste better." This advice may also apply to one's own spending and activity choices.
  - osswid 7y ago
    “The pennies you save will be the dollars your widow’s husband spends.”
  - masona 7y ago
    Reminds me of the story in Invisible Cities - a young man dreams of the perfect city that contains all of his favorite things. By the time he arrives at the city of his dreams, he is an old man and sits off to the side with the other old men, who have moved on from the dreams of their youth.
willart4food 7y ago
Don't forget to add the "Facebook Effect" where everyone else does everything just perfectly, and most everyone is scared of experimenting by "trying" something that might not work out. We need to re-define what failure is.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  is it real ? by watching youtube videos of people with various skill levels (including grads, phds, old gurus) I am quite motivated to try and have no notion of failure or fear of it in my mind (and I'm the kind to be afraid to fail) it's surprising how two platforms can breed two opposite sentiments. Culture I guess.
  - nemo 7y ago
    It's one thing to watch experts you don't know excel at things. It's a very different thing to get the notion that your peers/friends on social media have everything worked out while you're struggling due to their selective sharing.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      Oh i see it's différent kind of relationship/competition indeed
beardedman 7y ago
I think about this a lot from time to time. > facing issues with our reward function I would say, we are facing issues with our CULTURAL reward function. For very long now our culture have deified those few people that can overcome, achieve and excel. What if the point to our existence isn't to overcome our obstacles to productivity in "getting things done" - but instead to go out, explore, create, drink, eat & be kind to each other within a relatively small community of people. I'm not saying that I know what that looks like, but I know I've wanted to run into the woods and never come back, a good few times now.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  What if, for some of us, it's neither? Not just getting arbitrary things done, with $things being a free variable. And not just living a life in maintenance/standby mode - the "drink, eat and be kind" part. To me, the latter sounds empty, and the former sounds pointless - because the whole point is that free variable. The things we do. One of the nice and addicting things about videogames is that they tend to set a goal in front of you that you emotionally care about, and then let you achieve it step by step through wits and skill. The goal is relevant, achievable; the steps and the outcomes have clear impact on your progress towards that goal, and the feedback is pretty much immediate. This is in contrast to our modern lives. There are almost no large, social-scale goals that are achievable by individuals or small groups. There are goals in the smaller communities, but smaller communities these days are less present and more fluid. And even among the goals affecting you and those close to you, achieving them tends to feel either like following a tutorial (no point in having agency), or like a game of chance (work, love). The feedback is distant, failure and success both turn your "gameplay" upside down. I'm not totally convinced of this, but I have this feeling that the problem of our cultural reward function is that today, it's mostly defined as "do whatever you like, be whoever you want to be". Maximum freedom, but minimum direction.
  - bumby 7y ago
    >set a goal in front of you that you emotionally care about, and then let you achieve it step by step through wits and skill. This reminds me of the concept of achieving a flow state. Find a meaningful goal that forces you to be focused while on the cusp of exceeding your skill level. One that is both creative and allows you to progressively increase your abilities. That seems to be an integral part of finding purposeful "work" that helps one find purpose. I also think this is why people are drawn to "craftsman" type hobbies like woodwork, brewing, and programming.
wtetzner 7y ago
Part of the problem is that making the "right" decision requires knowing the future. Sometimes procrastination is actually valuable. I've had many situations where I've been putting something off for a long time, and then eventually it turns out I didn't need to do that thing after all. Doing it would have ended up being a waste of time. The problem is that you can't predict which things are important to do early and which ones you should wait on.
- RookyNumbas 7y ago
  What you're describing is more like general uncertainty of the future. Procrastination is when those uncertainties have collapsed into pressing realities that need to be handled. And then you don't do them anyways. Putting off learning a new framework because you're not sure if it will be useful isn't really procrastination. Not preparing for your interview tomorrow is.
- mewpmewp2 7y ago
  In my procrastination in 95 percent of cases this is definitely not it. I usually will not find out that I did not have to do this unless I do it. I am talking about entrepreneurship mostly. So just do it to find out asap.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> I think the subject deserves a Black Mirror episode and few startups. This is the probably the most HN solution to a problem I've ever seen posted. And just so we're clear: I don't mean that in a good way.
- gbjw 7y ago
  Startups to save the world and Black Mirror to lampoon the naivety of their techno-utopian worldview. The yin and yang of today's culture.
agumonkey 7y ago
I'd be happy to go back to when we didn't have solutions. Call me crazy but I take some pleasure in maintaining good old ways that have balancing benefits for us all in the group. Granted I don't mean having to walk 10 miles with a 50kg bucket of water on my back .. but something that enforces some long time walk, physical exercise, simple team work. Even if that's just to make a shed and not a new k8s cluster to do whatever.
- leftyted 7y ago
  This is the main way people deal with modernity: hobbies that mimic the surface characteristics of "the old ways".
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    yes, which I find quite sad if not more
    - KevanM 7y ago
      Sad in what way, seeing someone develop an 'old way' craft and apply it? Or that it is not more intertwined in the fabric of society?
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        In the fact that our society is selling us something so fake people have to relive past good stuff on the side.
        aaronblohowiak 7y ago
        I for one appreciate modern medicine and the internet. I also practice hand tool woodworking as a hobby, and while it scratches an itch to be more physical and present I’m in no way a Luddite.
        wool_gather 7y ago
bsanr2 7y ago
>Short term reward seems to overrule long term planning and goals if the outside pressure is not there and we have a choice. I think the emphasis is wrong here. Short term rewards overrule long term planning when there isn't room for long term planning. In modern society, it's not that long-term planning isn't emphasized enough, nor that internal will towards it isn't strong enough. To the contrary, we're bombarded with messages encouraging instant gratification. You'll notice that many long-term initiatives are bolstered by offloading either the physical effort or the cognitive load onto others: construction and farming are highly-mechanized and specialized jobs; retirement planning is done by experts, as is healthcare; education is a matter of enrolling in a program that figures out timing and curriculum for you. Of course, this paradigm favors individuals who have wealth. The idea of community is neither a panacea nor a platitude; it's a structural schema for offloading personal effort onto people who are concerned but dispassionate, routing around both issues of money and of direct biological impetus, thereby reducing the individual and collective load. Any workable solution to a systemic problem such as this is going to include other people, so we need to stop looking at it as a per-person engineering problem.
danans 7y ago
> Short term reward seems to overrule long term planning and goals if the outside pressure is not there and we have a choice. Short term reward overrules long term planning on the opposite extreme of situation also: when you have to struggle to make it through the next day, which is a situation that many still face today. And operating on a short term reward basis for long enough ends up cementing that way of thinking, whether you are doing it as a result of comfortable boredom or persistent struggle. IMO, there is a Goldilocks zone of balanced security and still unfulfilled needs wherein people are incentivized to think longer term with respect to both themselves and society.
kylestlb 7y ago
Well, the article states that a solution to procrastination is therapy (cbt, act, or whatever flavor you choose). Procrastination is a manifestation of general anxiety and your brain can be reprogrammed by a combination of reframing your thought process and medication if needed. Supervised exposure therapy is probably the best biofeedback you can get.
sdinsn 7y ago
> I think the subject deserves a Black Mirror episode and few startups. I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not

classified 7y ago

> If you think humans as AI systems Humans are not "AI" systems but infinitely more complex. Which is why, among other things, humans are capable of driving a car safely while "AI" is not. I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV.

Brave-Steak 7y ago
What makes you think we are anything more than the output of a reward function? Dopamine and other hormones function as our reward system and are so fundamental and drive effectively all of our behaviours and our learning from the moment we were born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/151/5/1978/2456493 https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/151/5/1978/2456493
- lr4444lr 7y ago
  The fact that it disgusts him, and that you in turn might appreciate the irony of the reward system actually hating itself is pretty strong evidence that there's more to the human experience than biologically reinforced operant conditioning.
  - Brave-Steak 7y ago
    > is pretty strong evidence that there's more to the human experience than biologically reinforced operant conditioning. I'm not sure that follows. The reward system can't produce output by itself. It requires an input. Any input. It requires an environment, a context. And one of the possible outputs is, well, his point of view. But that doesn't invalidate the reward system. It just shows how unpredictable it is.
    - mewpmewp2 7y ago
      There are layers upon layers in that reward system, although everything should be explainable. So how did the reward system come to a point that it does not want to believe it will die at some point and for that reason it had to create several imaginary stories such as religion etc? I wonder if it maybe has to do with group dynamics? In order for some conscious systems to be controlled by more powerful entities they would have had to been fed delusions in order for their reward systems to be happy and not feel cheated upon. Eg reward system wants to maximize survivability and when it is controlled by other systems in power it has to be led lies that after death it will be better so all in all the reward system gets so skewed that eventually it is likely to believe any other type of delusions as well. Such as for example that itself is not a reward system and if it was it would hate itself. So in the end are all delusions defense mechanisms for that reward system to accept that things are unfair, this reward system might not be able to achieve the desired goals so it has to adapt itself? But why can't this reward system just hibernate without delusions? Edit: actually I think coming to hate itself as a reward system is part of societal pressures. Society pressures each reward system to do common good for that society and creates morals. These morals have been created in a manner that one has to be something more than a selfish creature or otherwise gets shunned so reward system will create all those thoughts in order to avoid having to face selfish desires vs societal pressures head on?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Why? That only suggests that the reward system can hate itself. It's not out of scope, much like a computer being able to self-diagnose some of its workings isn't a weird thing.
nippoo 7y ago
The human "reward function" is likely more complex than current AI - and not always particularly logical (though vaguely correlated to survival of your own genes!) - but it's probably naïve to assume that we're anything more complicated than a very advanced automaton trying to optimise a reward function...
- s_kilk 7y ago
  I think it's dreadfully naive to assume there's a single, identifiable reward function.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    You can always map lots of small reward functions onto a single large one. For a fictitious example, total_reward = sin(time_of_day) × dopamine_reward + (oxytocin_reward / adrenaline_reward)
    - platz 7y ago
      How do you even add them.. it's like asking what is the utility of the statue of liberty plus the utility of NAFTA? Just because it's a mathematicians/economists wish doesn't mean it's correct. Why did the drunken man look under the streetlight for his keys? "Didn't loose them here, but that's where the light is"
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > How do you even add them.. In dollars. It's literally what currency is for. Of course there's no one set of dollar values for most items. They very much depend on a context. But in a particular, well-defined context, you can very much convert both Statue of Liberty and NAFTA to dollars and sum them up to something that makes sense in that context. > Why did the drunken man look under the streetlight for his keys? "Didn't loose them here, but that's where the light is" Well, drunk people tend to have problems calculating expected value.
ben_w 7y ago
I sympathise with your feelings of disgust, as I hated the idea of hypnosis and psychological research since I was a teenager. Perhaps “disgust” is the wrong word for me, as I felt understanding works take away the magic and wonder and mystery of what it means to be able to feel like I exist. I still don’t like the idea of being able to modify my own low-level preferences in a meaningful way, but I have come to accept that pretending it’s not a thing can make it unreal. (Also: AI is about as good as humans at driving cars, despite the computers in self driving cars being nowhere near as complicated as even just the bits of your brain that are involved in driving).
INGELRII 7y ago
> I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV. Very interesting and heavy statement to say in this context. (I think your comment should be upvoted just to bring this honest description of how feelings and self-image interact with our thinking)
- mewpmewp2 7y ago
  Why be disgusted over something that honestly seems pretty obvious. (unless there are delusions in my logic)? What else could there be other than particles interacting with each other? And if there are particles interacting with each other how could it be anything else than a reward system? What is the alternative? Even if there was something non physical like a soul what leads decision making for that soul?
Ensorceled 7y ago
Ironically, disgust is part of your internal reward system.
inscionent 7y ago
Have you seen humans drive cars?
- classified 7y ago
  Ha, you do have a point here, of course. But for comparison, have you seen "AI" drive cars?
- olooney 7y ago
  Humans are capable of driving cars safely. Many people go their whole lives without ever being at fault for a single accident. Some drivers, especially professionals, practice defensive driving at avoid or preempt accidents where they would not have been at fault. My own father, for example, has been the "n+1" car in an n-car pile up on more than one occasion, as he was the only one leaving a safe distance. He avoids all distractions and pays attention to the behavior of other cars on the road. He gives advice like, "don't just look at the brake lights - look for the car to pitch forward because that means it's braking hard and you should be too." Another time I saw him avoid a serious accident even though he was in the passengers seat simply by telling the driver, who had just taken their foot off the brake after the life turned green and was about to enter the intersection, "wait, stop, that guy's going to run the red light." Note that this was before the other car had actually done so - he just noticed it was slowing down. If everyone drove like that, cars would be safer than airplanes. So it's not a cognitive issue. Almost anyone can learn to drive a car very safely, they just choose not to.
gbrown 7y ago
> I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV. Well we use different words for it, but I’m not sure I understand the alternative? The brain is a physical thing, and it’s (in the broader physiological/hormonal environment) making the decisions. “Reward function” sounds reductive, but obviously it’s a much more complex phenomena than all current human created AI. We’re not just minimizing a sum of squares, if that’s what you mean.

d4nt 7y ago

“The ideal timeframe to use for the reward function” is an instance of an age old question about what’s really important in life. Most people agree that taking lots of heroin and dying in a matter of months is suboptimal. Most people also agree that living a life of utter sacrifice in pursuit of some higher goal might not be good either. You might be working on something pointless. Some self interest is actually beneficial to society in general. In order to validate that you’re doing something worthwhile. It’s also debatable how to value the opportunity cost of missed fun now, against future fun. Especially if the future fun is experienced by someone else. Conscience, selfless love for our children, culture, and religion are varying levels of patch on this simple human brain chemistry. I don’t think technology adds anything fundamentally new.

mlrtime 7y ago
"Especially if the future fun is experienced by someone else." I'm always reminded of the commercial where the young man saves up his money and works hard so his much older self can fly first class somewhere. I always think the same, this could be some other version of himself, does it make sense to give this your future self?
- tcbawo 7y ago
  That reminds me of a quote from Machiavelli that I recently saw on HN: "Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits should be conferred gradually, and in that way they will taste better." This advice may also apply to one's own spending and activity choices.
- osswid 7y ago
  “The pennies you save will be the dollars your widow’s husband spends.”
- masona 7y ago
  Reminds me of the story in Invisible Cities - a young man dreams of the perfect city that contains all of his favorite things. By the time he arrives at the city of his dreams, he is an old man and sits off to the side with the other old men, who have moved on from the dreams of their youth.

willart4food 7y ago

Don't forget to add the "Facebook Effect" where everyone else does everything just perfectly, and most everyone is scared of experimenting by "trying" something that might not work out. We need to re-define what failure is.

agumonkey 7y ago
is it real ? by watching youtube videos of people with various skill levels (including grads, phds, old gurus) I am quite motivated to try and have no notion of failure or fear of it in my mind (and I'm the kind to be afraid to fail) it's surprising how two platforms can breed two opposite sentiments. Culture I guess.
- nemo 7y ago
  It's one thing to watch experts you don't know excel at things. It's a very different thing to get the notion that your peers/friends on social media have everything worked out while you're struggling due to their selective sharing.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Oh i see it's différent kind of relationship/competition indeed

beardedman 7y ago

I think about this a lot from time to time. > facing issues with our reward function I would say, we are facing issues with our CULTURAL reward function. For very long now our culture have deified those few people that can overcome, achieve and excel. What if the point to our existence isn't to overcome our obstacles to productivity in "getting things done" - but instead to go out, explore, create, drink, eat & be kind to each other within a relatively small community of people. I'm not saying that I know what that looks like, but I know I've wanted to run into the woods and never come back, a good few times now.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
What if, for some of us, it's neither? Not just getting arbitrary things done, with $things being a free variable. And not just living a life in maintenance/standby mode - the "drink, eat and be kind" part. To me, the latter sounds empty, and the former sounds pointless - because the whole point is that free variable. The things we do. One of the nice and addicting things about videogames is that they tend to set a goal in front of you that you emotionally care about, and then let you achieve it step by step through wits and skill. The goal is relevant, achievable; the steps and the outcomes have clear impact on your progress towards that goal, and the feedback is pretty much immediate. This is in contrast to our modern lives. There are almost no large, social-scale goals that are achievable by individuals or small groups. There are goals in the smaller communities, but smaller communities these days are less present and more fluid. And even among the goals affecting you and those close to you, achieving them tends to feel either like following a tutorial (no point in having agency), or like a game of chance (work, love). The feedback is distant, failure and success both turn your "gameplay" upside down. I'm not totally convinced of this, but I have this feeling that the problem of our cultural reward function is that today, it's mostly defined as "do whatever you like, be whoever you want to be". Maximum freedom, but minimum direction.
- bumby 7y ago
  >set a goal in front of you that you emotionally care about, and then let you achieve it step by step through wits and skill. This reminds me of the concept of achieving a flow state. Find a meaningful goal that forces you to be focused while on the cusp of exceeding your skill level. One that is both creative and allows you to progressively increase your abilities. That seems to be an integral part of finding purposeful "work" that helps one find purpose. I also think this is why people are drawn to "craftsman" type hobbies like woodwork, brewing, and programming.

wtetzner 7y ago

Part of the problem is that making the "right" decision requires knowing the future. Sometimes procrastination is actually valuable. I've had many situations where I've been putting something off for a long time, and then eventually it turns out I didn't need to do that thing after all. Doing it would have ended up being a waste of time. The problem is that you can't predict which things are important to do early and which ones you should wait on.

RookyNumbas 7y ago
What you're describing is more like general uncertainty of the future. Procrastination is when those uncertainties have collapsed into pressing realities that need to be handled. And then you don't do them anyways. Putting off learning a new framework because you're not sure if it will be useful isn't really procrastination. Not preparing for your interview tomorrow is.
mewpmewp2 7y ago
In my procrastination in 95 percent of cases this is definitely not it. I usually will not find out that I did not have to do this unless I do it. I am talking about entrepreneurship mostly. So just do it to find out asap.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

> I think the subject deserves a Black Mirror episode and few startups. This is the probably the most HN solution to a problem I've ever seen posted. And just so we're clear: I don't mean that in a good way.

gbjw 7y ago
Startups to save the world and Black Mirror to lampoon the naivety of their techno-utopian worldview. The yin and yang of today's culture.

agumonkey 7y ago

I'd be happy to go back to when we didn't have solutions. Call me crazy but I take some pleasure in maintaining good old ways that have balancing benefits for us all in the group. Granted I don't mean having to walk 10 miles with a 50kg bucket of water on my back .. but something that enforces some long time walk, physical exercise, simple team work. Even if that's just to make a shed and not a new k8s cluster to do whatever.

leftyted 7y ago
This is the main way people deal with modernity: hobbies that mimic the surface characteristics of "the old ways".
- agumonkey 7y ago
  yes, which I find quite sad if not more
  - KevanM 7y ago
    Sad in what way, seeing someone develop an 'old way' craft and apply it? Or that it is not more intertwined in the fabric of society?
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      In the fact that our society is selling us something so fake people have to relive past good stuff on the side.
      - aaronblohowiak 7y ago
        I for one appreciate modern medicine and the internet. I also practice hand tool woodworking as a hobby, and while it scratches an itch to be more physical and present I’m in no way a Luddite.
      - wool_gather 7y ago

bsanr2 7y ago

>Short term reward seems to overrule long term planning and goals if the outside pressure is not there and we have a choice. I think the emphasis is wrong here. Short term rewards overrule long term planning when there isn't room for long term planning. In modern society, it's not that long-term planning isn't emphasized enough, nor that internal will towards it isn't strong enough. To the contrary, we're bombarded with messages encouraging instant gratification. You'll notice that many long-term initiatives are bolstered by offloading either the physical effort or the cognitive load onto others: construction and farming are highly-mechanized and specialized jobs; retirement planning is done by experts, as is healthcare; education is a matter of enrolling in a program that figures out timing and curriculum for you. Of course, this paradigm favors individuals who have wealth. The idea of community is neither a panacea nor a platitude; it's a structural schema for offloading personal effort onto people who are concerned but dispassionate, routing around both issues of money and of direct biological impetus, thereby reducing the individual and collective load. Any workable solution to a systemic problem such as this is going to include other people, so we need to stop looking at it as a per-person engineering problem.

danans 7y ago

> Short term reward seems to overrule long term planning and goals if the outside pressure is not there and we have a choice. Short term reward overrules long term planning on the opposite extreme of situation also: when you have to struggle to make it through the next day, which is a situation that many still face today. And operating on a short term reward basis for long enough ends up cementing that way of thinking, whether you are doing it as a result of comfortable boredom or persistent struggle. IMO, there is a Goldilocks zone of balanced security and still unfulfilled needs wherein people are incentivized to think longer term with respect to both themselves and society.

kylestlb 7y ago

Well, the article states that a solution to procrastination is therapy (cbt, act, or whatever flavor you choose). Procrastination is a manifestation of general anxiety and your brain can be reprogrammed by a combination of reframing your thought process and medication if needed. Supervised exposure therapy is probably the best biofeedback you can get.

sdinsn 7y ago

> I think the subject deserves a Black Mirror episode and few startups. I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not