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Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

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Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#211

Post by m0llusk »

miggol wrote: post #164

I enjoyed the article. Even though I've heard most of it before, I'm the kind of person that really needs reminding of the core message. Somehow it's so easy to fall back into the "willpower is the trick" mindset. Perhaps because it's reinforced so heavily in popular culture, as the article mentions. The article does however, in my opinion, commit a crime in bringing up the often misrepresented marshmellow experiment…

I remember being given the marshmallow test as a kid. It was so blatantly condescending and manipulative that I was utterly disgusted.

For one thing, I lived in a household dominated by a raging drunk father who would mercilessly beat anyone who dared to question him, let alone disobey. So, sure, I could take adult orders just fine. But that left the question as to why. Apparently this creep expected to learn something from the exercise which made me sad. And I feared having to deal with his children as peers if he had any.

They also completely failed to ask or notice anything about my loathing for marshmallows. I thought they were completely awful non food and didn't want anything to do with them ever. Just smelling them and touching them was unpleasant. So I took my two marshmallows from the encounter and gave them to the first other kid I met who wanted them.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#212

Post by stavros »

bmicraft wrote: post #187
LoganDark wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a story I hear from time to time, about how monks quit bad habits. They practice mindfulness, which is staying aware of the habit every time they feel tempted. They still indulge in it, but they make sure they're always doing it on purpose, fully aware of their actions. Once they've turned it from a compulsive behavior into an intentional one, they can stop. Their intentional behavior made the comp…

> When done properly this is supposed to have a 100% success rate. Sounds a lot like the No True Scotsman fallacy. I'm sure most smokers trying to quit think about how bad it is every single time, yet they can't. How would one even know when you've "thought about it hard enough"?

Yeah, I'm really wary of the "when done properly, it's effective" rhetoric. It's like "we know this isn't effective, but that's because nobody does it properly". Well if it's impossible to do properly, how is it effective?

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#213

Post by CPLX »

arp242 wrote: post #104
CPLX wrote: post #21

[flagged]

This is just undirected cynicism. It doesn't even engage with anything in the article, which is considerably more in-depth than your comment implies. While social sciences and behavioural research as a field has its share of issues, to claim it's "all just nonsense and bullshit" is far more nonsense and bullshit. And what's the alternative? "Common sense"? "What my dad told me"? Because that's always on point...

One alternative would be to come up with a name that doesn’t have the word science in it. I nominate Political Science to be the first to go. It’s a combination of history and political philosophy, it’s not science at all.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#214

Post by imtringued »

andrewstuart wrote: post #54

Someone explained to me that the subconscious mind does not like giving up something that it likes in exchange for nothing. Say for example you want to give up smoking. So don't give up. Instead, just stop that behavior for the present time - then your subconscious is not fighting you. So you want a cigarette? Well sure OK you can have one, but defer that decision to have it for some period of time. Maybe start with…

Cigarettes aren't bad because nicotine is bad, they are bad because you get addicted to the byproducts of additives.

Low nicotine cigarettes are just as bad for your health and in terms of addictiveness.

Meanwhile if you go the other way and possibly even crank up the nicotine with vaping, you end up with less chemical dependence. There is a significant difference between inhaling vapor and inhaling smoke that drives addictiveness.

Yes, vaping is still bad, but it takes less willpower to quit vaping than to quit smoking.

Almost every successful addiction therapy relies on slowly weaning the patient off the drugs, which then gets misrepresented as "making drug addicts high using tax money".

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#215

Post by imtringued »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #186
LordDragonfang wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You know what the action required is, do it >If you do something, it is because you prioritised it higher then everything else. This is exactly the sort of non-actionable advice that the article says doesn't work , though. Saying that you just need to "prioritize" something is the same as saying you just need to focus more willpower - it doesn't work for most people. What it sounds like your friend did is used a min…

>What it sounds like your friend did is used a mind trick to create a habit so it was a required part of his routine, which made it easier. Whats the difference between a mind trick, willpower, decision, and dedication? Deciding that you will do something and not internally debating it IS willpower.

That's not willpower at all.

I have to do things I don't want to do all the time. Once I am in the mindset, it is trivial to just continue it. If I go to sleep, it is easily lost and takes hours to recover. Therefore, the easiest way to do it, is to simply not go to sleep and stay up for another two hours and ruin my sleep. It's very easy, zero willpower is needed. Willpower is completely overrated.

People who talk about willpower don't actually use it, they pretend that whatever they do requires a lot of willpower or demonstrates their willpower to make themselves look good.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#216

Post by rizzom5000 »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #161
rizzom5000 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that someone who is a good singer would also be a good dancer is a non-starter for someone applying critical thinking, in my opinion. Do you have any other examples where you think critical thinking abilities cannot be universally applied?

:) can I please get an explanation why it's obvious to you that there is not correlation between singing and dancing ability? I'm genuinely curious EDIT: I can't dance nor sing for shit so I guess I'm a living example of falling victim of some sort of logical fallacy.

I don't think there is an obvious correlation or obvious absence of correlation. In some sense, it's heuristics all the way down; but where one might see an obvious correlation, the one who is applying critical thinking sees only a possible correlation.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#217

Post by danaris »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #186
LordDragonfang wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You know what the action required is, do it >If you do something, it is because you prioritised it higher then everything else. This is exactly the sort of non-actionable advice that the article says doesn't work , though. Saying that you just need to "prioritize" something is the same as saying you just need to focus more willpower - it doesn't work for most people. What it sounds like your friend did is used a min…

>What it sounds like your friend did is used a mind trick to create a habit so it was a required part of his routine, which made it easier. Whats the difference between a mind trick, willpower, decision, and dedication? Deciding that you will do something and not internally debating it IS willpower.

Right: that is willpower, which means that by the article's findings, even if it worked for one person, telling other people that they "just have to do it" won't work if it already hasn't worked for them.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#218

Post by danaris »

andrewstuart wrote: post #182
LordDragonfang wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You know what the action required is, do it >If you do something, it is because you prioritised it higher then everything else. This is exactly the sort of non-actionable advice that the article says doesn't work , though. Saying that you just need to "prioritize" something is the same as saying you just need to focus more willpower - it doesn't work for most people. What it sounds like your friend did is used a min…

I agree with the advice in terms of "how do I do something"? You have to get off your arse and do it. That's the actionable advice. There's no substitute for action.

Spoken like someone who has never had to struggle with executive function disorders.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#219

Post by pi-e-sigma »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #216
pi-e-sigma wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) can I please get an explanation why it's obvious to you that there is not correlation between singing and dancing ability? I'm genuinely curious EDIT: I can't dance nor sing for shit so I guess I'm a living example of falling victim of some sort of logical fallacy.

I don't think there is an obvious correlation or obvious absence of correlation. In some sense, it's heuristics all the way down; but where one might see an obvious correlation, the one who is applying critical thinking sees only a possible correlation.

You didn't provide any argument supporting your assertions. So your critical thinking is not really that critical, because you can't really defense your claim.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#220

Post by LoganDark »

cout wrote: post #203
bmicraft wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any research to suggest that's a real thing? It certainly does not sound like something that should be possible when you put it this way.

I read a paper recently that proposed that procrastination involves a slow increase in anxiety as a deadline approaches and a stimulus that is conditioned by the removal of that anxiety. That is, chronic procrastinators receive a greater reward when they wait until the deadline. This is supported by animal studies. It is possible that there is a similar mechanism here. The choice to delay gratification is akin to pro…

> That is, chronic procrastinators receive a greater reward when they wait until the deadline.

Yeah, absolutely. I have severe ADHD and this is my experience. I usually can't do something until it's completely necessary, and doing it at the last second is the most exciting/rewarding.

In school I used to finish all my homework before I even went home, because forcing myself to do that was more exciting/rewarding than doing it any other way. But this same mechanism is responsible for a bunch of my procrastination, too :)

I also tend to hate my chores a lot, absolutely despise doing them, but I think that's on purpose to try to make the act of completing them more rewarding. Completing something I don't care about is meh, getting rid of something I absolutely hate is good.

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