>Research in my own lab and others suggests that, if you want to improve your self-control, what you should do instead is focus on proactively reducing, rather than reactively overpowering temptation. Fortunately, there are several ways and opportunities to do this.
Am I the only one who has, many times, encountered people who say "I don't buy junk food because if I do I'll end up eating it?"
This is one of my gripes with psychology articles/self help books. So so many topics are simple 'revelations' that many of us have figured out by the time we are 20. Can't eat a cookie if you don't have any cookies.
I've read some good psychology books ("Thinking fast and slow" was great), but most of the others I've read I could have have read the one page summary and realized I don't need to read it.
> This is one of my gripes with psychology articles/self help books. So so many topics are simple 'revelations' that many of us have figured out by the time we are 20. Can't eat a cookie if you don't have any cookies.
I recall Scott Alexander talking about this on one of the SSC posts -- can't remember which -- about the fact that people miss developmental milestones for reasons. And you can ask the question: What developmental milestones am I missing? Or: which cognitive tools do I need for my toolbox?
It's good to teach things that "you should already know", because maybe you're one of today's lucky 10000.
Wow, great article. This completely explains why travel (not the tourist kind, the serious kind) tends to make one more tolerant: you encounter people who clearly have very different values and beliefs, but who are nevertheless amazing human beings. It’s a powerful force for developing a more complete theory of mind.
I really liked the article, but I wonder how many people can read it and think: "hmm, indeed, I don't seem to have that capacity" rather than "hmm, indeed, I've seen others not be able to do this"? I know I certainly felt more of the latter, with the possible exception of indeed sometimes still ascribing nefarious intentions rather than a different world view to people I disagree with - but even then, I only do so with the caveat of "well, at least I'm aware of and trying to combat those thoughts".
But not all. What is condescending to one is a necessary insight to another. Personally, I am very grateful to people who are willing to say obvious things.
I also occasionally re-listen to the audio of self-help books in order to remember things I learned which are simple yet hard.
I like this comment. It seems to me that we do forget some of our learnt wisdom and to be reminded of things we 'know' that we may have forgotten is a very human and therefore valuable thing. Maybe the purpose of the whole oral tradition - but I'm out of my depth here. The lyrics of a song (from the seventies?) summarize this for me - once you exclude the sentimental aspect: "I have a friend who's going blind, but he sees much better than I".
We do forget! Recently there have been too many times where I “realized” something important or profound, only to go back and see it in my writing from years ago.
So, like the sibling comment about prayers, I’m trying to build a system that collapses those insights into a small enough space that I can review them regularly. Kind of like regression tests for mind function.
Thinking Fast and Slow is actually pretty flawed as well. See https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und... and e.g. The Bias Bias in Behavioral Economics paper by Gigerenzer. It turns out quite a lot of these "biases" are actually quite useful and effective in the real world.
There are a million "simple facts" so knowing all of them in some sense doesn't mean you are accessing the one you need when you need it.
I think this is a fairly general explanation of why smart people do dumb things.
Also of why reading self-help writing can seem like it's revealing important stuff to one person, seem obvious from a different perspective, and not really help anyway.
People can do a very wide variety of things at any given moment, but temperaments or tendencies cannot be changed so easily. Large problems come from a persistent but small or even tiny bias, such as consuming slightly more calories than you burn. A ten pound weight gain in a year is less than 5% over 2000 calories maintenance. 20 years of that and you might be close to 400 lbs. Saying "why can't that person just not eat that..." is denying the problem of balancing something over a lifetime when the homeostatic feedback mechanism people rely on is out of whack.
I don't mean to suggest that weight control is unique, lots of things in life are about the accumulated benefits or harms over time. In management of an organization, not just individual problems, too.
This is definitely true of the "self help" genre. A concept that has a real kernel of wisdom and can be expressed in a few pages often gets blown out of proportion into an entire "framework".
I have seen people shaming others for strategies like that. Usually by calling them weak and generally treating it as admission of character flaw.
Also, typical how to loose weight advice does not talk about reducing temptations ar all. Instead, it focuses on strong will and self control - blaming people for failure to follow instructions but never giving advice on how to make following easier.
So, even if some know that, a lot of people do not act on it.
My problem is that my GF buys a lot of snacks and cookies and chocolates and... which completely broke my tactic of not having any snacks/sweets at home
A locked cabinet has been working wonders for me. It's hard to restrict everyone in the house to my dietary needs, but it's also hard to live in a house where unhealthy temptation is in every corner.
Give her the key and ask her to lock all her junk food up. It works.
I am not saying that this happened to me ;) But if I was facing a choice between (eventually) getting Metabolic syndrome and a having to find a new GF, I would definitely not choose to get metabolic syndrome :)
Yeah and frankly it's a bit of a red flag to me now whenever I see one partner sabotage (whether intention or not) the achievements of their significant other. That's not to say that their girlfriend is lacking moral high ground, but rather it may not be an optimal coupling. A good partner will naturally encourage you to be your best self and you will encourage them similarly.
This. The definition of a partner over time shifted from someone who does stuff with me and eats dinner with me and watches movies to someone who understands my goals and dreams and supports and pushes me to get there and vice-versa.
The problem is that people will express classic hindsight bias no matter which way the result turns out. Let's say you're studying relationships and researching whether having similar interests is better or worse than having dissimilar interests. If you spend a million dollars on a comprehensive longitudinal study and find the former, the public will lambast you for rediscovering the obvious result that "two of a feather flock together". But if you find the latter, you'll be mocked for rediscovering the simple fact that "opposites attract".
On the topic of self-control, I'm actually surprised that the results turned out the way they did. I would have expected the opposite result; that "exercising" your discipline solves the problem once and for all, while reducing temptation is just asking for a relapse when temptation inevitably presents itself again.
This is actually brilliant in the sense that the key to resisting temptation might be to put as many potential obstacles in the way as possible.
If you can't resist purchasing junk food off the shelves, then put a limit on your credit card, or leave your credit card at home and only bring enough money to the store for essentials. And if that's not enough, then limit yourself to only shopping at health food stores where the options are less tempting, and so on.
TBH it was a revelation to me. I did stumble upon it but somehow "be virtuous, exercise self-control" trope keeps reasserting itself. I find myself straining against something then realzing, wait, just throw this thing out and poof, done.
There is a difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence. There is also the issue of what is true for an individual might not actually be true for most people.
I totally agree, but I think you should be more explicit in pointing out that this is an experimental validation of folk knowledge, which is an important step. There are plenty of instances of folk knowledge being completely wrong (at least for the mean/median/common case), despite "nearly everyone" knowing it.
Am I the only one who has, many times, encountered people who say "I don't buy junk food because if I do I'll end up eating it?"
This is one of my gripes with psychology articles/self help books. So so many topics are simple 'revelations' that many of us have figured out by the time we are 20. Can't eat a cookie if you don't have any cookies.
I've read some good psychology books ("Thinking fast and slow" was great), but most of the others I've read I could have have read the one page summary and realized I don't need to read it.