1. I want to do X.
2. I want X to be done.
3. I want to be the kind of person who Xs.
4. I want to be seen as an Xer.

These are the four kinds of motivation I learned about at LessOnline, and they provide a framework for investigating one’s desires that I have found to be both very challenging and very useful.

To make the framework concrete, let’s use the toy example of doing one’s homework in school. The four levels would then look something like:

1. I want to do my homework.
2. I want my homework to be done.
3. I want to be the kind of person who does their homework.
4. I want to be seen as a diligent student (who does their homework).

In my own case, my motivations were usually somewhere between 2 and 4, and very rarely were they ever at 1.

Let’s look at a more interesting example though, one in which the motivation isn’t being compelled by an outside force.

A Personal Example

I think to myself, “I want to be a writer.”

(This makes sense; I mean, you’re reading this right now. I have a substack.)

When I have the thought, I’m not thinking about the four kinds of motivation above. It’s a simple enough thought, at least in words, but the feelings behind it, once investigated, aren’t simple at all.

The activity actually in question is writing (although I do basically all of my writing at a computer, so technically the action is typing, but we’ll call it writing anyway and I’ll avoid giving in to my inner Intolerable Pedant).

So the four kinds of motivation, for this activity, are:

1. I want to write.
   1. Do I have this motivation? Do I actually want to spend time doing the action of writing? Do I enjoy the process of writing itself, as an end in itself, without any other instrumental goals beyond it?
   2. Maybe. This is the hardest motivation to parse, for me. Writing is hard; it requires focus and commitment and effort. It expends energy and time and labor. And there are so many other things I like to do with my time - read, watch TV/movies, play games with friends. All that being said, there are few things so rewarding as being in a flow state, where the words come out perfectly and I can put what’s in my head down on paper.
2. I want things to be written.
   1. Do I have this motivation? Are there are ideas in my head that I want posts and essays to be made from? Are there stories that I want told, independent if I’m the one to tell them? If I could just tell an advanced AI (say, GPT-7) that I want this idea/story to be written and have it done, would that satisfy me?
   2. Yes, I have this motivation. There are ideas in my head that I want out into the world. Do I have to be the one to put them there? Harder to say. There is some non-zero amount of satisfaction I get from a actually doing the thing - as in, when observing the fruits of my labor I feel satisfied that I wrought it with my own hands and mind.
3. I want to be a writer.
   1. Do I have this motivation? Do I want to self-identify as a writer?
   2. Yes. This was the original form of the motivation that came to me, and perhaps the most straightforward to answer. I want to see myself as someone who writes. It’s something that I associate with being smart and creative and high-status, because a lot of the people I look up to or learned from were writers.
4. I want to be seen as a writer.
   1. Do I have this motivation? Do I want people to know that I’m a writer? Do I want to be seen, be identified, as a writer, as opposed to all the other things I could be seen or identified as?
   2. Yes, and pretty powerfully. I daydream about being a respected writer or well-known author. I have a strong desire to walk into a bookstore and pick up a book with my name on it. I want to be someone’s favorite author.

So: I have motivations 2-4, and most of the time I’ve got 1. It’s complicated, and maybe something I’ll write about somewhere else someday.

Is that…is that good enough?

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic

In the psychological literature, they distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from inside the person, like a singing in the shower because you love to sing. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the person, like singing on a stage because you get paid to sing by your employer.

How do these map onto the four kinds of motivation above?

Motivation 1 is unambiguously intrinsic. You do a thing because you want to be engaged in the act of doing a thing.

Motivation 2 can go either way: maybe you want the thing to be done for personal, intrinsic reasons, like wanting a piece of art to exist in the world. You can also want a thing to be done so that it’s not bothering you anymore, like the laundry.

Motivation 3 is primarily intrinsic, because it deals with how you see yourself. If you want to perceive yourself as a writer (which isn’t the same as actually wanting to sit down and write), that’s still an internal motivation.

Motivation 4 is completely extrinsic. You want other people to see you as something.

Comparing the Levels

Are some kinds of motivation better than others? What about purer? More honest?

There was a large disagreement in the room when we talked about this at the conference. Some believed that motivation 1 was clearly superior to the others and that motivation 4 was bogus (i.e. if you introspected and realized that you were doing something because of 4, you should not be doing that thing). Others thought that each kind of motivation was valid.

My suspicion is that, for any given desire beyond the trivial (I want to eat because I’m hungry), all four motivations are at play to some degree. When considering any given task, we may want to engage in the act of doing it or not, but either way we likely want it done. And the parts of our brains that govern how we see ourselves and how others see us are always at play. We are always telling ourselves a story of who we think we are, and this task plays a small but nonzero part in that story.

As for motivation 4, well, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting other people to think well of you, or wanting their understanding of your identity to match your own. There’s nothing strange or bad about wanting other humans to see you the way you see yourself, to have your own internal narrative about who you are reinforced by the narratives that others see.

What is true is that if you don’t have motivation 1, actually doing the thing you’re intent on doing is going to be an exercise in self-discipline or self-control. Whether we’re talking about working out, writing, being more social, etc., if you don’t actually want to be doing the thing, then doing the thing is going to cost you energy/willpower/sapience. That might be a price you’re willing to pay, but it’s still a price you’re paying.

To put it more bluntly: without motivation 1, the activity will be costly. A person only has so much ability to make themselves do things, and you’ll be spending that ability.

As Clint Eastwood (would have) famously put it (if he were being maximally politically correct),

A sapient being of any gender or orientation’s got to know their limitations.

To put it as bluntly as possible:

Any motivation may be sufficient to get you to do the activity.

Motivation 1 is necessary for the activity to be enjoyable/refreshing.

A Simulacra To Oneself

My first thought when I saw this breakdown of different kinds of motivation was: that looks/seems a lot like the concept of Simulacra levels. For those who aren’t familiar, Simulacra levels are a way of understanding what someone means when they say something.

Level 1 is the straightforward truth as someone see it.

Level 2 is expressing a preference or desire.

Level 3 is expressing group membership.

Level 4 is a move in a 4D chess game meant to manipulate the other players. I’ll freely admit I don’t understand this level very well.

Here’s an example for reference, although I highly recommend reading Zvi’s thoughts:

Level 1: “There’s a lion across the river.” = There’s a lion across the river.

Level 2: “There’s a lion across the river.” = I don’t want to go (or have other people go) across the river.

Level 3: “There’s a lion across the river.” = I’m with the popular kids who are too cool to go across the river.

Level 4: “There’s a lion across the river.” = A firm stance against trans-river expansionism focus grouped well with undecided voters in my constituency.

As the Simulacra level increases, we get farther from the truth and the statement becomes more about what other people will think about the statement.

In the same way, as we go from motivation type 1 to type 4^[1], we get farther from a desire to actually do a thing and the motivation becomes more about how we see ourselves or how others see us.

Simulacra level 1 is about honestly imparting information; motivation 1 is about honestly wanting to engage in an activity.

Simulacra level 2 adds the idea of using the information imparted to try to accomplish a goal; motivation 2 adds the idea of an activity being accomplished as separate from actually doing it, and focuses on the former. In both cases we’re distinguishing between doing the thing (sharing information, doing an activity) from the effects of doing the thing (people behave differently when given different information, the thing being done).

Simulacra level 3 is about using a statement to express group membership to others; motivation 3 is about engaging in an activity as self-identity. Because group membership is a kind of identity, both level 3s have added the idea of identity to the mix. You say/do the thing because you identify in a certain way and the doing/saying is consistent with that.

Simulacra level 4 and motivation 4 are both about what other people think, and your primary impetus is to manipulate the way that you’re perceived. You’re not saying/doing something because it’s true or because you want to be doing that thing; you’re saying/doing something because of the social rewards: the status or position associated with your action.

Generally speaking, as one’s Simulacra level increases, one’s behavior is becoming more strategic. The consequences of the action are stretching out further in time, space, and social connection, and the higher Simulacra levels are about understanding and using that to achieve one’s desired ends.

As one moves from motivation type 1 to type 4, however, the movement isn’t so much to become more strategic as it is to make the reward more abstract.

• When you enjoy an activity and want to do it (type 1), there is no abstraction. You want to do it, so you do it.
• But when you do a thing because you want it done (type 2), you’re looking ahead in time to having the thing done, and taking your reward from there.
• Wanting to be a kind of person who does a thing (type 3) is about building a consistent pattern of behavior over time, an even more abstract reward, because it barely corresponds to doing the thing at all. You can feel good about being a writer at any time, regardless of when or how much you write.
• Wanting to be seen as the kind of person who does a thing is entirely unmoored from the reality of doing it. All effort and time have been abstracted away, and the desire is for the social reward of being perceived in a certain way, where that perception may or may not be based on any actual activities that you actually did.

Conclusion

Identifying the different kinds of motivation isn’t about judging them. It’s okay and natural to have many different reasons to do what you do.

However, understanding your motivations can be very useful information to have. If you don’t enjoy doing something but want it done (having motivation 2 without 1), consider paying someone else to do it, or figuring out which parts absolutely have to be done and which parts don’t (and only doing the former).

If you’ve got motivation 4 without motivation 1, that might be a sign that you should reconsider what you’re doing, because you’re spending your time doing something you don’t enjoy just so people will perceive you in a certain way.

In reality, I think that most motivations are a mix of the four, and that’s okay.

1. ^{^}

   I considered calling the different kinds of motivation above ‘levels’, just as the Simulacra levels are referred to as ‘levels’, but decided against it.

   There’s a sense with the Simulacra levels of each level dominating the previous one. The entire edifice of thought behind it conceives of interaction as a strategic game, and each Simulacra level is playing the game with a different amount of skill (the higher the level, the higher the skill).

   (Which isn’t to say that operating at a higher Simulacra level is a good thing. It’s usually not. There’s a reason that Simulacra level 4 sounds like what a politician would think.)

   Furthermore, once the Simulacra level that someone is playing at is identified, they can be considered operating at that level and any below it. It’s therefore useful to have a rank ordering.

   With the kinds of motivation, on the other hand, I wanted to distance the language from implying that any kind was better than another. Furthermore, a person can have any combination of the kinds of motivation, making a rank ordering of them less useful.