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You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

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Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#121

Post by nzmsv »

n8cpdx wrote: post #68
nzmsv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In before the other comments to this effect: - You are weak - Your grandparents had it worse - Think of the people working for minimum wage - Some of us actually love programming so much we will happily sacrifice our health; this choice is morally superior because we say so - I haven't had a vacation in 20 years and neither should you /sarcasm off

I really like society as it is. I, as rare as it is, identify as a neoliberal and I generally am invested in how things are. I like to see people working hard, I work hard myself, and aside from wanting a larger safety net, largely value the idea of a competitive market for labor. Those ideas, I suspect much more prevalent on HN than other sites, lead to defensiveness when antiwork or work-critical ideas are shared.…

My own view is this: money is a metric that our society uses as a measure of usefulness of a certain individual for others in the collective. Like any metric, it is imperfect and doesn't capture nuance very well.

When you optimize for any metric, be it lines of code or bank account balance, you generally get suboptimal results. Doesn't mean the metric is useless. It's just not the only source of truth.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#122

Post by armchairhacker »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #117
armchairhacker wrote: post #109

I think that, instead of saying "you're not lazy", we should take the stigma away from laziness and say "you are lazy, but don't feel bad". Laziness is a character trait present in all humans, some more than others, and we should acknowledge it and work to become less lazy, without punishing it or being ashamed of it. You are "lazy" if you don't do something that would benefit you because it's too much effort. That s…

> work to become less lazy, without punishing it But to laziness, work is punishment.

See, that's a fallacy people believe which prevents them from acknowledging their laziness. The key is to work smarter, not harder.

Some things, such as getting fit or studying, are going to take effort. But the effort is an unintended side-effect of the work, not the goal. In my experience, if you work towards the solution and not think of it as "putting in X effort", the perceived effort is a lot less.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#123

Post by goatlover »

myself248 wrote: post #94
n8cpdx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like society as it is. I, as rare as it is, identify as a neoliberal and I generally am invested in how things are. I like to see people working hard, I work hard myself, and aside from wanting a larger safety net, largely value the idea of a competitive market for labor. Those ideas, I suspect much more prevalent on HN than other sites, lead to defensiveness when antiwork or work-critical ideas are shared.…

I'm not anti-work, I'm anti-toil. The industrial revolution was supposed to free humankind from backbreaking labor and usher in an era of comfortable enlightenment. Instead, we got rampant inequality, environmental devastation, sociological manipulation, and the internet of shit. (Whose true effects we won't see until Cranky Bear decides to show us all at once.) And huge numbers of people still toil 50+ hours a week…

Before the industrial revolution, inequality was far worse and so was the amount of back breaking labor humans and animals performed. It's true we have a larger negative environmental impact now. Part of that is the huge increase in population made possible by the industrial revolution. Some environmental things like pollution inside cities and rivers has gotten better over time in industrialized countries. The internet is a mixed blessing. It offers a lot in addition to the shit. The problem is the expectation that it would usher in a digital utopia instead of just reflecting society as everyone started to move online.

I certainly wouldn't want to go back to manual labor, no electricity or indoor plumbing, lack of refrigeration, much more limited options for travel, news and entertainment, and the lack of modern medicine.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#124

Post by Xophmeister »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #118
Xophmeister wrote: post #106

I might just being dense or, perhaps more generously, completely un-self-aware, but I genuinely don’t understand the premise of this argument. Internal resistance is an attempt to avoid the pain we associate with successfully doing the thing. We subconsciously believe that succeeding in doing something — that we’ve presumably never done before — will cause us some “emotional pain”, thus we go to lengths to avoid it?…

Back when I was in school, I was consistently punished for succeeding too much. Finished with my tasks? Here's extra. Knew more than the teacher about the subject? Shut up mister wise guy. Understood the subject and wanted to discuss it? There's no time for debate. Made something amazing on the computer? Stop playing on the computer, go outside instead. Made a lot of money? Get robbed. Etc.

High-achievers in toxic environments, no matter how cliché, is surely too niche to generalise to everyone. Still, I get it now — thanks :) — and while I can empathise to a degree, I think it must be highly subjective. Maybe the author’s choice of the word “pain” wasn’t the clearest.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#125

Post by 8jef »

zepto wrote: post #34
gala8y wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your read is much more benign. I think I wanted to see more in this article. I think the idea of acknowledging this part of us and seeing it as a positive force is not conveyed clearly enough, but it's there. > ‘You aren’t lazy, you just haven’t done the necessary prep and planning to make the thing you want to do feel straightforward’ might be just as useful advice. Yes. This would be a subset of "it's too difficu…

> and boom, you are back to square one. What do you mean by back to square one?

Back to the beginning, being forced to start again from scratch

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#126

Post by alexpotato »

Xophmeister wrote: post #106

I might just being dense or, perhaps more generously, completely un-self-aware, but I genuinely don’t understand the premise of this argument. Internal resistance is an attempt to avoid the pain we associate with successfully doing the thing. We subconsciously believe that succeeding in doing something — that we’ve presumably never done before — will cause us some “emotional pain”, thus we go to lengths to avoid it?…

Let's say you had a parent who was very successful in their business field.

Let's also say that parent was either terrible at being a parent or a bad spouse. If they were a bad parent, that impacted you directly and if they were a bad spouse, that may have impacted someone you care about aka the other parent.

You may have at some point in your childhood created an emotional connection between:

- good at business

- bad at parenting/being spouse

You in turn might then equate "being successful" with "being a bad person". Let me stop here and say: yes, this is totally irrational but emotions are, by definition, not always rational.

Given the above, it wouldn't be surprising that you might develop a "fear of success". Particularly so if your goal is to be a better parent/spouse than the offending parent. In other words, "I don't want to be like them!" might affect both the parenting/spouse side of things and, because they are conflated, success in business.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#127

Post by daerogami »

corvuscorvid wrote: post #75
codegeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt UBI will make everyone stop working. As far as I understand, the point of UBI is to ensure that people are not homeless, have enough to put food on the table and it covers your absolute basic needs. Lets say we implement UBI at 1K/Month which is what people like Andrew Yang proposed. That is not enough to just sit at home all day. You still need to make money but hopefully with that 1K, you won't be homeless…

I'm confident that there are many, many people who would choose to continue living with no permanent home (tent, RV, etc) and spend their UBI on oxy, meth, heroin or crack.

I'm curious where your confidence comes from. Do you know many people pulling in a stable income while also living out of a tent, smoking meth?

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#129

Post by zepto »

gala8y wrote: post #29
zepto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article does just set up a new pathology. Your read is much more benign. The article’s set up is actually quite harmful and disempowering. It identifies resistance as a bundle of fears and pain to be overcome in order to be able to ‘just do’ the thing you are trying to do. Obviously sometimes fear and pain do exist, and acceptance and awareness of them makes it easier to move forward. However most of the…

> Your read is much more benign. I think I wanted to see more in this article. I think the idea of acknowledging this part of us and seeing it as a positive force is not conveyed clearly enough, but it's there. > ‘You aren’t lazy, you just haven’t done the necessary prep and planning to make the thing you want to do feel straightforward’ might be just as useful advice. Yes. This would be a subset of "it's too difficu…

>> ‘You aren’t lazy, you just haven’t done the necessary prep and planning to make the thing you want to do feel straightforward’ might be just as useful advice.

> Yes. This would be a subset of "it's too difficult

I don’t see how this follows. Recognizing that you haven’t done the prep means it’s not too difficult if you do the prep.

If instead of doing the prep you go introspecting for fears and pain you will fail because you aren’t doing the next step, and that will in turn undermine your self belief and reinforce the idea that you need to do more introspection to overcome your resistance.

A lot of cults fuck people up with isomorphs of this idea.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#130

Post by zepto »

8jef wrote: post #125
zepto wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and boom, you are back to square one. What do you mean by back to square one?

Back to the beginning, being forced to start again from scratch

Poster has edited their comment so it’s no longer ambiguous.
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