
Taming the Lizard Brain - lifeisstillgood
https://quillette.com/2018/08/27/taming-the-lizard-brain/
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the_greyd
I would recommend the documentary [The Century of the
Self]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04))
about advertising as propoganda, in which Edwards Bernays plays a central
role.

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davidscolgan
This is a topic near and dear to my heart. As a freelancer, I sit in my
apartment sounded by as much high calorie food as I want that is
scientifically optimized to be as tasty as possible, I have a job that
requires zero exertion or even leaving the house, most of my work interactions
are online and otherwise I'm alone all day.

This is the exact opposite that the human mind is adapted to, and I'm
relatively convinced that in order to be effective in the modern world you
have to take an actively counter intuitive path through life. It's hard to be
healthy, to be productive, to be social, since the works just isn't set up to
make it easy now.

I haven't fully solved this for myself, but I have shifted from being hard on
myself for eating a whole chocolate bar in one sitting to asking myself how
can I make it harder for myself to find myself in the situation that I'm
eating a whole chocolate bar?

As some things I've read have suggested, one way to get lots of willpower is
to make any other option impossible. So, don't bring candy bars into the
house, pay for a gym membership so I'll feel reptile brain loss aversion for
not going, etc.

Especially for an entrepreneur, it seems like a critical thing is just getting
out of the way of yourself.

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saagarjha
> one way to get lots of willpower is to make any other option impossible. So,
> don't bring candy bars into the house

Not everyone has this luxury. My office has a shelf of candy that's restocked
every couple days. I think I've put on at least five pounds since I joined two
months ago.

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davidscolgan
Yeah and it sucks. There's a convenience store right outside my apartment that
now sells chips and ice cream. I eat more of those now than I used to. My
Android phone will not let me uninstall the YouTube app, and I've been
watching more YouTube lately.

My point here is that the modern world almost seems to be conspiring against
healthy living, both mentally and physically, so whatever you have to do to be
healthy is worth doing. I've played around with various web blockers, and
finally got around this YouTube on phone problem by installing both a blocker
app and also using the adb command line tool to manually edit the hosts file
to also block YouTube in the browser which required unlocking the bootloader
and accidentally wiping my phone. But now, I can't watch YouTube on my phone
and it's wonderful to not have that temptation now.

I don't know what the answer is to community junk food. I'm at home with
parents this week and I was gifted junk food, which I was grateful for but
also a little sad about.

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davidscolgan
I've wondered if software can also be the solution here.

Can you make an app that appeals to my emotional lizard brain and prevents me
from eating candy and browsing the internet? That's something I'd pay for.

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lifeisstillgood
The money quote for me is

This represents a great challenge for those who believe that individuals left
to their own devices are most likely to make rational choices.

I think that Thaler views on Linertarian Paternalism are looking more
sensible. Handling instant gratification for the good of individualas and
society seems important

~~~
DanAndersen
>This represents a great challenge for those who believe that individuals left
to their own devices are most likely to make rational choices.

The unfortunate reality is that institutions, organizations, and governments
are also not prone to making rational choices when left to their own devices,
due to them being made up of individuals as well. Paternalism requires a faith
that those in charge are somehow more free from the limitations of our flawed
nature while also having others' interests at heart.

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notduncansmith
> Paternalism requires a faith that those in charge are somehow more free from
> the limitations of our flawed nature while also having others' interests at
> heart.

We have technology to coordinate group action plans and execute them
transparently, and our culture is gradually beginning to support honesty
around failure and change, no longer demanding the appearance of perfection
(which seems to be the driving force behind the failure of so many attempts at
paternalism).

It would appear, then, that we could collaboratively and openly engineer a
culture that supports flawed-but-honest-and-still-competent leadership in
their attempts to advance community-sponsored projects and leverage technology
to facilitate transparency at scale.

Is there a reason this approach is inherently untenable (as opposed to just
logistically difficult)?

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waterhouse
To quote Henry Hazlitt:

"Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man.
This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great
enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is
insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine-the special pleading
of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests
identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see,
interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public
policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit
one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would
benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue
for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to
devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either
convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that
clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible."

This is a major obstacle to "collaboratively and openly" deciding on the right
policies (paternalistic or otherwise). If the process is open, it probably
won't be collaborative: the discussion might end up dominated by those with
special interests. I believe this is how the notion that tariffs might be a
good idea (for economic purposes, anyway) has made it into public policy—this
is one of the items Hazlitt's book goes through[1].

With regard specifically to "paternalistic" policies, one of the chapters is
titled "The Assault on Saving", and I could easily imagine that people guided
by Keynesian economics would recommend inserting trivial inconveniences to
discourage people from saving their money while nudging them towards spending
it, so as to increase aggregate demand and therefore the greater good.

[1] [http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-
lesson/contents.html](http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-
lesson/contents.html) , see chapter 11 for tariffs and 24 for "The Assault on
Saving"

~~~
mistermann
> for economic purposes, anyway

A very important qualifier, thanks for including it. Few people seem aware of
that aspect, which I suspect results in a rather large number of confident
conclusions about the intelligence of other people, that happen to actually be
wrong.

