Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Self-control signals and affords power

today.ucsd.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 137 posts

Re: Self-control signals and affords power

#91

Post by anon291 »

ranprieur wrote: post #51

This article mentions a study that found almost no correlation between people who self-report having high self-control, and people who actually do well on tests measuring self-control: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/15/16863374/wi... The most likely explanation is that people who report high self-control are really experiencing less temptation.

How in the world does a test of 'does this colored text match its name' test 'self-control'. 'Self-control' as used in the article means things like 'can you stick to a diet', or 'can you keep your word', not can you control your thought processes enough to quickly name a color. You can be highly self disciplined and bad at this task, or highly undisciplined and good at it. In fact, I'd imagine undisciplined people might be inspired by the entertainment value of this 'game', and spend useless time practicing it rather than doing what actually matters.

This study is complete garbage.

Re: Self-control signals and affords power

#92

Post by jack_pp »

aiisjustanif wrote: post #79
jack_pp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery While my ego would want to agree the truth is staying in power and making money exponentially isn't easy either, and you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money. That said you choo…

> you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money. Surely we do have very notable exceptions to this.

I'm not saying top earners never lie, I'm saying overall they have to be somewhat trustworthy. There are exceptions to this rule of course but I do believe it's a rule.

Take Elon, he does overpromise and you could say he lies about self-driving capabilities but overall he does deliver

Re: Self-control signals and affords power

#93

Post by zelphirkalt »

jack_pp wrote: post #73
pilgrim0 wrote: post #37

IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery, in general. Mainly because one can lie their way into power and money, countless examples of that both at a local level and global level. Now, mastery requires the opposite of lying and pursuing easy to achieve goals. It’s the hardest path because frustration is constant, and it requires one to keep stretching the limits of th…

> IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery While my ego would want to agree the truth is staying in power and making money exponentially isn't easy either, and you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money. That said you choo…

We just need to look at politicians and voters, to know, that it is not necessarily true, that ones power and opportunities vane, when people discover the truth about ones lies.

Re: Self-control signals and affords power

#94

Post by zafka »

c4wrd wrote: post #22
15457345234 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree? It's ad copy promoting a self-help book.

I have no affiliation with the author of the book and stand to gain nothing from helping others. I still stand by my choice of The Daily Stoic. I resented the thought of reading self help books because my pride led me to believe that if I read a self help book, I was admitting I was weak. That said, the reason for the book is simple: the book is intended to take a year to read, one page at a time. I wake up each day…

Nice offer! I would also be very interested in how many people have taken you up on your generous offer. I myself would edit your offer to include the caveat: "emails within a week" to prevent all future orders for the book being funneled through you :).

Re: Self-control signals and affords power

#95

Post by nostrademons »

ranprieur wrote: post #51

This article mentions a study that found almost no correlation between people who self-report having high self-control, and people who actually do well on tests measuring self-control: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/15/16863374/wi... The most likely explanation is that people who report high self-control are really experiencing less temptation.

Is this a distinction without a difference?

In the original qualitative write-ups for the Marshmallow Test, they described the children using all sorts of distraction strategies to basically make themselves forget that there's a tasty marshmallow sitting right in front of them. Maybe this is all that self-control is - having enough self-awareness (and valuing your future self highly enough) to direct your attention elsewhere so that temptations disappear from your view. It fits with the neuroscience we know about consciousness as well (that it's effectively a brain network which taps into the other brain networks and can observe and direct their firing) and even into how attention mechanisms in GPTs work.

It also is how most mature adults approach the world. If you're an alcoholic, don't go to the bar. If you're married, don't go to the strip club. If you want to lose weight, put less food on your plate. Most of what we know of as self-control is really having the skills to avoid temptation.

Re: Self-control signals and affords power

#98

Post by GMoromisato »

jack_pp wrote: post #73
pilgrim0 wrote: post #37

IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery, in general. Mainly because one can lie their way into power and money, countless examples of that both at a local level and global level. Now, mastery requires the opposite of lying and pursuing easy to achieve goals. It’s the hardest path because frustration is constant, and it requires one to keep stretching the limits of th…

> IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery While my ego would want to agree the truth is staying in power and making money exponentially isn't easy either, and you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money. That said you choo…

Also lying is not that easy. Humans have evolved various tools to spot liars. I would bet that the average person is better at detecting lies and liars than they are at lying.

The exceptions people talk about, of people gaining power by lying, are all exceptionally good at lying.

Post reply on HN