ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1d ago
My family, as much as they love me, still regularly sigh and tell me they wish I was less lazy or had more willpower.
In what contexts?
Firstly, why would I lie about my willpower?
I would not claim that you are lying.
willpower... executive function... conscientiousness
I think these are probably nonidentical concepts, though I would likely have to spend some additional time thinking about it to be able to write on it eloquently.
Whence your urge to find solutions to problems that actually work? When it comes, how does it manifest?
ControlsFreak
1d ago
I find this and the discussion below rather fascinating. It's pretty clear from multiple responses, including some of your own, that you don't simply lack willpower. And it's not at all like some folks would have you believe these conversations go down, where there's a bunch of folks (made of straw or something) telling you that you just lack willpower or are a stupid failure or something. Instead, you're trying to self-proclaim a lack of willpower, which is mostly contradicted by all available evidence.
And further, instead, you've not described almost any challenges that in any way really resemble any sort of lack of willpower. Most of the actual challenges you've described are just problems with a variety of known solutions that actually work... and, well, you've also proclaimed that you have an urge to find those sorts of things.
Frankly, as I put it:
There are a bunch of reasons why they don't do it, and that's okay.
I don't think you've quite hit the nail on the head yet for why you don't do it, but I think it's pretty clear that it's not a matter of willpower, and it's probably not really a matter of a couple minor challenges that have a variety of pretty well known solutions, either.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
So, in this sentence, what is the "problem" that is in need of a solution? Is it, like, "the problem of trying to decide what to tell people"? Or what?
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Then by all means, please elaborate on how you intended the following sentence to be interpreted:
I'm a doctor for many reasons, but ranking highly among them is that I have an urge to find solutions to problems that actually work.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Ah, the good old "all that's needed is just some willpower" argument.
Ah, the good old strawman. Actually, very very bad old strawman.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Compare what I wrote:
There are a bunch of reasons why they don't do it, and that's okay.
I don't know to what extent a clustering can be identified that can be simply labeled "not wanting to put in the effort".
ControlsFreak
3d ago
So educate me, then. Because the phrase 'Changing your lifestyle does actually work; it's just that many people don't do it.' falls pretty well in line with what my attitude would have been a year or more ago.
You went wrong a single sentence later:
Like you, I felt the majority of weight-gain and weight-loss issues was a matter of people simply not wanting to put in the effort.
'lifestyle changes can sometimes only work to a point'
Possibly so. I'd need to see some high quality research on this question to know much either way, where those points might be, whether they can be predicted, etc.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Like you, I was of a similar attitude.
I don't think you have accurately captured my attitude. In fact, I think you have gotten it completely wrong.
And as time has gone by, I'm becoming more and more convinced that our modern diet has done extreme damage to our bodies
Perhaps so. Biological processes in general do not seem to be fully-reversible, especially when you include the effects of aging. Nevertheless, that is not an argument against the measurable physiological benefits of certain lifestyle changes.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Oh, well then this is just the standard, all-too-common, strawman. You're responding to a figment of your imagination, not anything I've written.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
What I'm saying is that advising lifestyle changes rarely works. I don't have firm figures at hand, but I suspect that the number of people I've recommended such eminently sensible things like losing weight, stopping smoking and going to gym grossly outweigh (pun not intended) the number who actually did anything about it.
This is much more circumspect than your original comment. The problem of advice-giving is significantly different in nature, and it has significant dependency on a wide variety of external, contingent factors that are not-necessarily related to the typical time-independent, mechanistic processes that the biological and medical sciences study. If you would please kindly continue to be this circumspect in future comments, that would be appreciated.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
Maybe "But don't tell people that utterly destroying enemy doesn't work, because it does." would be better?
I don't know how this analogy is supposed to work. The point of the development of military doctrine is to build up a body of professional knowledge, generally to the purpose of, indeed, destroying the enemy (though there are sometimes tweaks for political constraints or other political objectives). This is, indeed, intended to be "what works".
Is the point of your analogy that the endeavor of developing military doctrine is simply fallacious from the get-go? This has other implications that I can think of. For example, rather than moving TRADOC, as Trump did, I think this point of view says that he should have simply eliminated it altogether. Of course, I think you can tell that I don't think that this is the point of the analogy, but I'm kind of struggling to see what the point is.
Maybe, on the other end, it's something along the lines of, "It's not terribly helpful to be a 400lb guy in a bed who just writes somewhere on the internet, 'Hurr durr, have you tried killing the bad guys?'"? I mean, sure? Yeah, I just don't get what you're going for, and I don't get how it's relevant to what I've said.
trying to not overeat vs extreme marketing of hyperpalatable foods is an adversarial process
Mathematically speaking, I would distinguish the two. This may be a complicated and difficult environment, but it is not an adversarial one. There are deep mathematical differences between the two.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
telling them that they are stupid failures
Sorry, what? You're just off the mark. Aside from the inherent differences between adversarial processes and other dynamic processes.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
I am very happy that these drugs helped your mother. I do not disparage anything about these drugs or anyone who chooses to take them.
...however.
I have an urge to find solutions to problems that actually work
You, like many others, go too far. Changing your lifestyle does actually work; it's just that many people don't do it. There are a bunch of reasons why they don't do it, and that's okay. They may be perfectly fine using a drug. Nothing wrong with that. But don't tell people that changing their lifestyle doesn't work, because it does.
Let's take something like, I don't know, becoming a doctor. I've heard that this process sucks. I've heard that plenty of folks burn out or fail at some point. I'm sure someone's mother somewhere failed in trying to become a doctor, regardless of how much her family tried to make her do it. Nevertheless, I think there are still fine reasons to say, "Here are the objective things you need to accomplish to become a doctor, and here are a variety of subjective tips to help you pattern your life in a way that is conducive to achieving that goal, if you so choose." Some people won't do it, and that's okay (in fact, the vast majority of people right now don't become doctors). We don't have a pill yet that magically gives people all the required knowledge of a doctor. But even if we did, it wouldn't be a reason to say that the other (true, good) information "doesn't work".
ControlsFreak
6d ago
What is "adversary-proof production"? What does it look like? What policies achieve that end state or detract from it?
This has been on my mind for a while. It comes up regularly in discussions concerning international trade, tariffs and other trade policy, manufacturing, agriculture, defense, and geopolitics. I've joked about it before:
North Korea now "produces" its own airplanes. Which I guess is cool if you want to make sure that you have whatever metric of "adversary-proof" (I'm not convinced it actually is, but it depends highly on the metric you use) and if you're okay with only being able to produce what are essentially copies of extremely old Cessnas. Maybe in 50 years, they'll be able to produce their own WWII-era fighter jets, which I guess is "adversary-proof" to one metric, but probably not all that "adversary-proof" according to other metrics.
I remarked in that comment that I was kind of joking, but only kind of. I think it really is that I just actually don't know what "adversary-proof production" actually means. I don't think I have a set of criteria to go check whether or to what extent a country's production is adversary-proof. Thus, I don't think I have a way of determining whether any particular policy proposal would or would not contribute toward that goal.
With this context, one of my various aggregators linked to this tweet:
Rice prices have exploded in Japan. The country goes grows about 99% of the rice it consumes, a condition approaching autarky, because of a lattice of subsidies, political influence and protectionism, which all make the market incredibly vulnerable to shocks.
The tweet includes a price chart. I checked reasonably quickly to make sure it wasn't totally off the wall and found articles like this. Apparently, there are a bunch of subsidies/market controls on the domestic production of rice in Japan. Moreover, there is only a very small amount of imported rice allowed without tariffs. The result is that the vast vast majority of Japanese-consumed rice is grown in Japan. There are very few companies that have established any sort of importation supply chain, no relations with international producers, no pre-existing options deals, no experience with the logistics of importing.
And thus, because of some supply (and possibly some demand) factors (one might quibble with the details here, and it seems like different authors point to similar buy slightly different details; I don't think it matters too much), the price of rice in Japan has skyrocketed. One might not worry too much, though. The government is here to help. They have a strategic stockpile of rice! (What a thing for a government to choose to do, have the expertise to manage, etc.) Which they've opened, and only slightly pushed prices a bit.
If you can't tell, I am sympathetic to the view of the tweet author. I don't think that what "adversary-proof production" means is that you shut out international trade, regulate production in order to make sure you preserve some sense of what you think the domestic market "should" look like, and have almost the entirety of your production be domestic.
...but that still leaves me wanting to know... what is "adversary-proof production"? What does it actually look like? I tried my typical strategy of hopping over to google scholar to see if I could find some academic writing on the topic, but perhaps they just use different key terminology, and I'm missing it. Can TheMotte help? Any academic work? Or even your home-grown (autarkic?) definition?
I don't see anything in here about the question of the uniqueness of government rule enforcement being with violence/kidnapping. Mayyyybe this:
Equals in rank or station within civilized society have a fundamentally different relationship and method of conflict resolution, one which specifically prohibits or codifies the escalation to a state of war.
But it doesn't actually discuss rule enforcement. How do you do rule enforcement? Like, any example of rule enforcement? I've given two example scenarios. You can give others. How do you do it in the case of maximal-opposition?
Thanks for the other context above, too. Combined with this, I'm not really sure this is really a matter of willpower/executive function/conscientiousness. It seems a bit more like just the human condition that some things are unpleasant, and different folks make different tradeoffs. I think there are a variety of reasons why folks make different tradeoffs here, too.
I'm not quite sure I've worded this in a way to get at what I'm looking for. The way you made it sound originally, it's like you have some excitement or something for certain types of problems. I was kind of getting Lottery of Fascinations vibes, and wanted to see if it was that sorta thing. I'm not really sure your response gets at that, because I probably didn't word the question well. Things like deferring to guidelines doesn't really seem to fit, unless the idea is that you sometimes rabbit hole down an alternative interpretation that hit the lottery. Or personally, do you just get tweaked by some types of problems or whatever.
I think, big picture, and going back to your earlier comment, you mention that you've lost more weight with diet/exercise in the past. That doesn't really seem to me to be describing someone who just lacks willpower, especially given the assumption (that I am not solidly making) that willpower is the necessary ingredient for such a thing.
Instead, it feels to me to be more of just the typical things of choices and tradeoffs. Like, you said that you'll plan on going hypertrophy über alles post-semaglutide, but hypertrophy sucks, man. I mean, yeah, some people enjoy dreamer bulking (which never really accomplishes the dream) on the diet side, but you still have to lift lots of heavy weights a bunch. Seems a bit weird, since you say that you just don't like the gym. But then, I guess you maybe say you'll do it because you feel like you kind of have to, but that gets back to feeling like a willpower-limited thing again (in the model where willpower is the necessary ingredient). So I don't know. Is there something that makes 'hypertrophy über alles' trip your fascination for finding solutions to problems (because yeah, those exist, and they involve lifting a lot of heavy weights), but that fixing your diet doesn't? Perhaps you could introspect some more on some of the differences and see if you could find relatable components to the problems, see if you could trick your lottery into finding at least something relevant in there to grab your attention.
Maybe I'll start with one little thing. Hypertrophy doesn't work great with a terrible, junky, dreamer bulky diet. I mean, it works okay, but if you're fascinated with the idea of hypertrophy über alles, you might want to consider the problems that it poses... problems which do happen to have solutions which actually work.
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