4 ms·

Sharing this to followup to the "screw motivation, you need discipline" post. Here's a quick summary: * The writer makes a distinction I wouldn't- that discipl

Sharing this to followup to the "screw motivation, you need discipline" post. Here's a quick summary: * The writer makes a distinction I wouldn't- that discipline is only discipline when it's applied to things you don't enjoy. * "Discipline is about willpower over base desires". I agree. Could also be framed as short-term vs long-term thinking and planning. * "Discipline is, in some sense, enslaving ourselves to an ideal or goal. A critical component of this definition is that the setting of the goals, the choosing of our ideals is not part of discipline. " Fairrr enough. Important point that discipline without good goal-setting isn't worth much. * "If discipline is a reduction of freedom, an intentional choosing of suffering, then why on earth would anyone want to have it? The obvious answer is because it lets you achieve goals. That is to say, it increases the number of possible things you can do. Paradoxically, increasing the number of goals you can achieve is pretty much the definition of increasing optionality, or freedom." Yup. * "Intentional optionality reduction need not be an act of self-discipline. One person may exercise discipline to not smoke the cigarette, another might throw away the cigarettes. A classical example is “Odysseus tied to the mast”." Classic commitment devices. * "People who are ruled by their passions and appetites can be ruled just as efficiently by any political system willing to pander to those things, while those who control themselves can’t reliably be controlled by anyone else. Thus the Roman government regularly sent Rome’s philosophers into exile, failing Chinese dynasties praised Confucius to the skies while doing away with anybody who took his teachings too seriously, and modern America uses every trick in the media’s book to marginalize those who remind us that the life of a channel-surfing couch potato might not express the highest potentials of our humanity." thatsdeepman.jpg * Timescales: "I generally separate discipline & willpower, primarily on the time-axis. Much of what I have read on the subject seems to agree with this approach, describing willpower as a short term thing, deployed over a duration of minutes, or for the hardiest of souls hours, while self-discipline extends over days, or possibly indefinitely. Many disciplines are intended to last indefinitely." * Interesting thoughts on discipline and empathy: "Working in the “all-is-now” perspective, I come to a very different answer, which is, “They would choose to suffer for the benefit of someone else”. In the most frequently described cases, “someone else” is either their own past or future selves, but one can easily imagine acts of self-discipline that are for the benefit of others. One example might be a hungry mother giving food to her child. Another example might be Pheidippides running himself to exhaustion in order to recruit the aid of Sparta for the Battle of Marathon. In this way, discipline and generosity begin to look confusingly similar."

vannevar 12y ago
I particularly agree with your first point. The idea that discipline is separate from motivation is not biologically plausible. Rather, discipline is a form of motivation. No one does anything that they don't receive gratification for doing. That one can imagine circumstances where they would receive even more gratification (ie, 'if that gun weren't being held to my head, I would prefer sitting on the couch to carrying this rock') is irrelevant. People with discipline receive gratification in their brains when they exercise that discipline. It's a learned response and you can train yourself or others to exhibit it with either a carrot or a stick, until the gratification is internalized.
VLM 12y ago
In the physical crafts there is another aspect of "enslaving ourselves to an ideal or goal" mostly revolving around safety. How many decades ago was I taught to never power up a lathe without immediately touching the chuck key in its holder (aka not in the chuck...) or never touch a table saw blade (while changing it or screwing around with adjusting it) without immediately prior touching the metal of its power cable (aka not plugged in) None of those are taught as in book learning but taught as in a discipline. And look, all these years later, still got all my eyes and fingers!

vannevar 12y ago

I particularly agree with your first point. The idea that discipline is separate from motivation is not biologically plausible. Rather, discipline is a form of motivation. No one does anything that they don't receive gratification for doing. That one can imagine circumstances where they would receive even more gratification (ie, 'if that gun weren't being held to my head, I would prefer sitting on the couch to carrying this rock') is irrelevant. People with discipline receive gratification in their brains when they exercise that discipline. It's a learned response and you can train yourself or others to exhibit it with either a carrot or a stick, until the gratification is internalized.

VLM 12y ago

In the physical crafts there is another aspect of "enslaving ourselves to an ideal or goal" mostly revolving around safety. How many decades ago was I taught to never power up a lathe without immediately touching the chuck key in its holder (aka not in the chuck...) or never touch a table saw blade (while changing it or screwing around with adjusting it) without immediately prior touching the metal of its power cable (aka not plugged in) None of those are taught as in book learning but taught as in a discipline. And look, all these years later, still got all my eyes and fingers!