In my case, I don't run into "not being able to make myself pursue my goals effectively" a whole lot. What I do run into a lot is, "not being able to figure out what goals I actually want to pursue."
I think that what's going on is this in part. When I find resistance within myself to pursuing some goal (which I read into the comedian watching reruns), I take that as evidence that this goal isn't what I'm really after. I don't spend a lot of time in a state of trying to make myself do something, because of my assumption that whatever I really want to do, I won't need... (read more)
To put it another way, ACT basically says we screw up our motivation because we direct our attention to goals that are not directly connected to experiencing our terminal values... which I believe is pretty close to what you're saying here, is it not?
It is pretty close, and even insofar as it's different, I think I agree with it. I'm not particularly a fan of the idea of "we can have values over states of the external world," because it seems to me that most, if not all, of our actual terminal values are mental states. In my opinion, if you think you have a value over a state of the external... (read more)
Frequently, we decide on a goal, and then we are ineffective in working towards this goal, due to factors wholly within our control. Failure modes include giving up, losing interest, procrastination, akrasia, and failure to evaluate return on time. In all these cases it seems that if our motivation were higher, the problem would not exist. Call the problem of finding the motivation to effectively pursue one's goals, the problem of motivation. This is a common failure of instrumental rationality which has been discussed from numerous different angles on LessWrong.
I wish to introduce another approach to the problem of motivation, which to my knowledge has not yet been discussed on LessWrong. This... (read 1850 more words →)
I've found that the most helpful thing for me in achieving my goals seems to be picking the right goals to begin with. I try to find goals that I really care about with a large portion of my being, rather than goals that only a small portion of my being cares about. This requires a fair amount of introspection. What do I want? It's not an easy question; counterintuitively, we don't know what we want. But, if I know what I want, then I can get it.
I'll give a couple examples. I used to have the conscious goal, "write music." My real goals, though I did not know it, were "express... (read more)
I have one of these, and I highly value our relationship. My friend and I have very basic disagreements in our worldview: I'm a mystic, and he's a rationalist. We spend our time working through our differences. He's done more than anybody else to make me question and revise my views on things. I think I've become significantly more correct, and a little bit wiser, due to his influence. He's also the reason I'm here on Less Wrong.
It's actually surprisingly hard to get to a point with somebody where you respect them and listen to them, despite having fundamental disagreements in your worldview. Every disagreement wears down rapport, and so extended discussions of fundamental differences in beliefs are a challenge for a relationship. I'm grateful to my partner for the fact that he still listens to my ideas when I've said so many things that I know seemed like nonsense to him.
I have met multiple people who are capable of telepathically transmitting mystical experiences to people who are capable of receiving them. 90%.
Good point, with the qualifier that many people (including professional philosophers) presently find themselves unable to wrap their heads around the idea that they have no non-material consciousness. The "argument from absurdity" against materialism is alive and kicking.
According to this theory, so far as I can tell, the events of Star Wars literally occurred. Is that correct?
This is an interesting question. I definitely agree that being a contrarian and being a conformist can both be forms of bias. However, I would add one example which suggests that conformity can in some cases be a positive instinct.
I have never studied general relativity in depth. My belief that "general relativity is right" is based on the heuristics, "most scientists believe in general relativity," and "things that most scientists believe are usually right." In part I think it's also based on the fact that I know that evidence and arguments are available which everybody claims to be very strong.
To show that most of my belief in general relativity comes from popularity-based... (read more)
I can relate to this. I had a crisis of faith about a month ago (thanks LessWrong!), and while I've "officially" stopped believing "those things," they still sometimes show up in my thinking. I am, as it were, in the midst of a complex re-architecting process. Particularly hard to eliminate are those beliefs which actually serve a functional purpose in my life. For instance, the beliefs that give me emotional support, and the beliefs that I use to decide my actions, are very hard to deal with. In these cases I need to figure out how to build a new structure which serves the same function, or figure out how to live without that function. This has required a significant amount of creativity and deep thinking.
The data I'm working from is that contact with certain people sometimes causes me to have mystical experiences. This has happened somewhere between 20 and 100 times, with less than a dozen people. Sometimes but not always, it happens in both directions; i.e., they also have a mystical experience as a result of the contact.
The simpler hypothesis, from a materialist point of view, is that seeing these people just tripped some switch in my brain, without any direct mind-to-mind interaction being involved. Then we can say that I also tripped such a switch in their brains in the cases where it was reciprocal. We are left with the question of why this weird psychological phenomenon happens.
The religious explanation is in many ways easier and more natural. We can say that my souls brushed up against these people's. It makes sense from within the religious frame of mind that this sort of thing would happen. But obviously we run into the issues with religious views in general.