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A thought, perhaps this like exercise? If you workout for an hour, you'll generally get tired and need to rest. However, if you work out everyday for a week, yo

by astine 17y ago

A thought, perhaps this like exercise? If you workout for an hour, you'll generally get tired and need to rest. However, if you work out everyday for a week, you'll get stronger and be able to workout longer and harder. Suppose moral fiber works this way? At first, as you work on your behavior, you can only do so much and simple sacrifices seem like a huge burden. As you continue, you conscience becomes stronger and doing 'the right thing' becomes more the norm and former behavior seems more extreme. --- Also possible, that 'virtuous consumption' is pursued for social status and not virtue, and so people who engage in it for this reason are entitled jerks as a matter of course.

camccann 17y ago
It's worth noting that studies have shown that applying "willpower" works exactly that way. Specifically, making conscious decisions to override subconscious impulses depletes cognitive resources in a measurable way, with some evidence that doing so repeatedly increases the amount of willpower reserves in the long-term. As an aside, I wouldn't assume that people are "entitled jerks" as such--even if it's all just social status signalling, they're almost certainly not consciously aware of it.
- astine 17y ago
  I think we might have different understandings of what makes one an 'entitled jerk.' Aristotle believed that people who did wrong but believed that what they were doing was right, were ethically worse than those that knew what they were doing was wrong. He argued that to confuse vice for virtue signaled more fundamental problems than simply the inclination to give into temptation. With this understanding, not being aware that you are an 'entitled jerk' simply makes you more of a jerk. Note that I'm not implying that every who buys organic produce is an 'entitled jerk.' People and their motives have to be judged on an individual basis.
  - camccann 17y ago
    I think you, like Aristotle, wildly overestimate conscious awareness. I'm not talking about doing wrong and believing it to be right, or even doing something without realizing it was wrong. I'm talking about just doing something without consciously knowing why you did it at all. The primary role of the conscious mind is not to make choices, but to rationalize after the fact the actions undertaken at the (largely amoral) subconscious's command. Expecting someone to always know why they made a decision is an impossibly high standard. The general inability to correctly interpret one's own motivations is discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion Note that this is not a cognitive defect, but the standard state of affairs. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia for when it goes more wrong than normal. A few examples: Implicit Association Tests may be more accurate than conscious introspection in identifying prejudice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test Grandmothers are hard-wired to be biased against some grandchildren vs. others. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=941739 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=941739 More directly relevant to this article, skim some of the posts on social signalling at http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/signaling http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/signaling and realize that, while the author uses intentional language of decisions and preferences, most of what he's talking about are the sort of choices heavily subject to conscious delusion. To summarize, accurate knowledge of one's own decision-making process is the exception, not the rule, and if questioned people are more likely to provide an ad-hoc rationalization based on inaccurate self-perception than anything resembling the actual reasons, and believe whole-heartedly that the rationalization is correct. To summarize the summary, nobody's generally aware of why they're doing whatever it is they're doing. To summarize the summary of the summary, being a person is a problem. [0] [0] With apologies to D. Adams.
    - astine 17y ago
      I have no idea what the any of that has to do with the discussion at hand. My point is that it's what you do and how you behave that makes you an entitled jerk or not, not whether you have introspection or not.

by astine 17y ago

camccann 17y ago

It's worth noting that studies have shown that applying "willpower" works exactly that way. Specifically, making conscious decisions to override subconscious impulses depletes cognitive resources in a measurable way, with some evidence that doing so repeatedly increases the amount of willpower reserves in the long-term. As an aside, I wouldn't assume that people are "entitled jerks" as such--even if it's all just social status signalling, they're almost certainly not consciously aware of it.

astine 17y ago
I think we might have different understandings of what makes one an 'entitled jerk.' Aristotle believed that people who did wrong but believed that what they were doing was right, were ethically worse than those that knew what they were doing was wrong. He argued that to confuse vice for virtue signaled more fundamental problems than simply the inclination to give into temptation. With this understanding, not being aware that you are an 'entitled jerk' simply makes you more of a jerk. Note that I'm not implying that every who buys organic produce is an 'entitled jerk.' People and their motives have to be judged on an individual basis.
- camccann 17y ago
  I think you, like Aristotle, wildly overestimate conscious awareness. I'm not talking about doing wrong and believing it to be right, or even doing something without realizing it was wrong. I'm talking about just doing something without consciously knowing why you did it at all. The primary role of the conscious mind is not to make choices, but to rationalize after the fact the actions undertaken at the (largely amoral) subconscious's command. Expecting someone to always know why they made a decision is an impossibly high standard. The general inability to correctly interpret one's own motivations is discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion Note that this is not a cognitive defect, but the standard state of affairs. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia for when it goes more wrong than normal. A few examples: Implicit Association Tests may be more accurate than conscious introspection in identifying prejudice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test Grandmothers are hard-wired to be biased against some grandchildren vs. others. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=941739 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=941739 More directly relevant to this article, skim some of the posts on social signalling at http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/signaling http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/signaling and realize that, while the author uses intentional language of decisions and preferences, most of what he's talking about are the sort of choices heavily subject to conscious delusion. To summarize, accurate knowledge of one's own decision-making process is the exception, not the rule, and if questioned people are more likely to provide an ad-hoc rationalization based on inaccurate self-perception than anything resembling the actual reasons, and believe whole-heartedly that the rationalization is correct. To summarize the summary, nobody's generally aware of why they're doing whatever it is they're doing. To summarize the summary of the summary, being a person is a problem. [0] [0] With apologies to D. Adams.
  - astine 17y ago
    I have no idea what the any of that has to do with the discussion at hand. My point is that it's what you do and how you behave that makes you an entitled jerk or not, not whether you have introspection or not.