7 ms·
Why would you do a thing you didn't ultimately want to do though?
by Y_Y 1y ago
Why would you do a thing you didn't ultimately want to do though?
- actionfromafar 1y agoSo you don't become weak and overweight, for instance.
- Y_Y 1y agoIf I hadn't wanted to avoid diet and exercise more than I wanted to not be weak and overweight then we wouldn't be here.
- stuartjohnson12 1y agoWho am I but the average weighted sum of my future preferences? Why should the temporal dimension of my preferences allow them to suppress other preferences?
- thomastjeffery 1y agoI find "not weak and overweight" to be the least compelling way to frame it. There are a lot of positive implications that become obvious when you say you want to be strong and lightweight. While "not weak" is a passive character judgement, "strong" is a constantly available opportunity.
- plemer 1y agoI read this as: how you can motivate yourself to do something you're currently not motivated to do but "ultimately" believe is worth doing.
- __turbobrew__ 1y agoNecessity. I don’t want to do my taxes every year and I need to force myself to just sit down and do it.
- giancarlostoro 1y agoOr someone else will force you to sit down for questioning ;)
- __turbobrew__ 1y agoYes, there are a number of things in this life where people with guns show up to your house if you don’t do it.
- jon-wood 1y agoRegrettably I need money in order to eat food.
- task331 1y agoso you do want to do it right, because you want to eat
- atoav 1y agoMany reasons. Maybe not doing that thing will be bad inthe long run. Maybe you want the fruit of doing that thing, but cannot enjoy doing it right now, etc. A popular example would be sports if you're not very fit. You would obviously have tangible health benefits if you did it, you may look more attractive, you may have more energy both physically and mentally. But since you're a couch potatoe sports is demanding, exhausting and sucks. Would you do more sports it would suck less or you might even find it enjoyable, but you don't and that's where you are. This puts you in the weird spot of wanting a thing but not wanting to do what would get you there, even if the reasons you don't want to do it would vanish if you did it. You can only really overcome this mentally, e.g. by priming yourself in certain ways, or by creating situations where you don't have a choice, because others rely on you, etc.
- giancarlostoro 1y agoThis isn't that they don't want to do it, they do, but they don't want the effort involved.
- what_was_it 1y agoYes! This is the real question. I wrote about this (as a tangent, but anyway) recently. https://asemic-horizon.com/2025/07/28/julian/ https://asemic-horizon.com/2025/07/28/julian/ TL;DR "akrasia", procrastination etc. are all forms of ambivalence that are not nearly as "psychological" and individual as usually presented. The nausea is in the world itself.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nachox999 1y agohow to do something when your mind wanna do it because it's rational but your emotions don't because it's painful
- task331 1y agoAt the end of the day I don't think there is such a thing. If you do I think deep down you want to do it, otherwise you wouldn't.
- Emore 1y agoWhen future-you wishes present-you had done the thing. So in a sense there is a you (future-you) that actually does want to do the thing.