Iām not completely certain if I had the right takeaway from your post, so feel free to tell me āthatās not at all what Iām sayingā, but it seems to me youāre pushing a sentiment that changing ones behavior is easy.
This is a sentiment I strongly disagree with. I think itās an incredibly unhealthy mindset that does few people any good.
Eating healthy and regular exercise is clearly good for me and within my long term interests and āeasyā to do, yet they are a constant source of struggle within my life. But it is not easy for me to do, if it was Iād be doing it without a second thought.
On the other hand, I never once worried about my weight, whereas my father spent ten years agonizing over 20 kilos. Why didnāt my father just snap his fingers and start eating the right number of calories?
Curing cancer by snapping my finger is impossible, so is snapping my finger and changing my brains neurons to find regular exercise and healthy diet easy. We all agree it would be crazy to feel guilt over the former, so why feel guilt about the latter?
We are all wired differently. What is easy for those you look up to, might be impossibly hard for you. What is easy for you, is be impossibly hard to someone else.
Be better than you were yesterday, thatās all anyone can ever ask of you.
I reposted this because I thought it was interesting, but I donāt agree with everything Schwitzgebel says. I certainly donāt do all of the good things that should be āeasyā for me to do, morally or otherwise. (Iāve gained a lot of weight in quarantine, for one.)
If I had to say something I do believe, and which Schwitzgebelās post reminds me of, Iād go for āsome kinds of behavior are more amenable to change than we might think.ā That doesnāt make moral behavior change easy, but it does seem to exist in a different category than calculus or rock climbing.
You flake, you run late, you disappoint someone, you donāt quite carry your load in something today, because itās not convenient.
There are many ways someone could try to get better at not doing these things, and many of those ways would probably work (unlike ways one might train for El Capitan, if one is an aging academic).
This distinction does seem relevant to me. And Iād guess that many people on this forum have changed their moral behavior for the better at multiple points in their lives; some became vegan, some began to donate more, some just became kinder and more charitable people.
What is the difference between people who did these things and people who havenāt yet? Some of this may come down to circumstances outside of someoneās control (e.g. not becoming vegan for health reasons, not donating because it really isnāt affordable), but some of it seems to come down to āchoosing not to beā in the Schwitzgebelian sense.
I donāt think this piece reveals anything too surprising, and thereās no single reaction Iād expect every reader to have. But Iāve found myself being more patient (choosing to be more patient?) since I read it, and I thought there was some truth in the piece.
My philosophy is to earn like upper middle class, live like middle class, and donate like upper class. One can typically accomplish this by roughly maintaining the consumption per person that one has earlier in life (e.g. college or grad school). Sure, there is temptation to have consumption creep as is happening in most of oneās peers, but it is not technically difficult like rock climbing, or nearly as bad as living with hunger on a diet. An exception for this being effective may be if oneās consumption is visible to those who determine how fast one advances in oneās career, and they donāt appreciate oneās choosing of charity.
Iām not completely certain if I had the right takeaway from your post, so feel free to tell me āthatās not at all what Iām sayingā, but it seems to me youāre pushing a sentiment that changing ones behavior is easy.
This is a sentiment I strongly disagree with. I think itās an incredibly unhealthy mindset that does few people any good.
Eating healthy and regular exercise is clearly good for me and within my long term interests and āeasyā to do, yet they are a constant source of struggle within my life. But it is not easy for me to do, if it was Iād be doing it without a second thought.
On the other hand, I never once worried about my weight, whereas my father spent ten years agonizing over 20 kilos. Why didnāt my father just snap his fingers and start eating the right number of calories?
Curing cancer by snapping my finger is impossible, so is snapping my finger and changing my brains neurons to find regular exercise and healthy diet easy. We all agree it would be crazy to feel guilt over the former, so why feel guilt about the latter?
Scott Alexander made this point wonderfully in his essay āParable of the talentsā.
We are all wired differently. What is easy for those you look up to, might be impossibly hard for you. What is easy for you, is be impossibly hard to someone else.
Be better than you were yesterday, thatās all anyone can ever ask of you.
I reposted this because I thought it was interesting, but I donāt agree with everything Schwitzgebel says. I certainly donāt do all of the good things that should be āeasyā for me to do, morally or otherwise. (Iāve gained a lot of weight in quarantine, for one.)
If I had to say something I do believe, and which Schwitzgebelās post reminds me of, Iād go for āsome kinds of behavior are more amenable to change than we might think.ā That doesnāt make moral behavior change easy, but it does seem to exist in a different category than calculus or rock climbing.
There are many ways someone could try to get better at not doing these things, and many of those ways would probably work (unlike ways one might train for El Capitan, if one is an aging academic).
This distinction does seem relevant to me. And Iād guess that many people on this forum have changed their moral behavior for the better at multiple points in their lives; some became vegan, some began to donate more, some just became kinder and more charitable people.
What is the difference between people who did these things and people who havenāt yet? Some of this may come down to circumstances outside of someoneās control (e.g. not becoming vegan for health reasons, not donating because it really isnāt affordable), but some of it seems to come down to āchoosing not to beā in the Schwitzgebelian sense.
I donāt think this piece reveals anything too surprising, and thereās no single reaction Iād expect every reader to have. But Iāve found myself being more patient (choosing to be more patient?) since I read it, and I thought there was some truth in the piece.
My philosophy is to earn like upper middle class, live like middle class, and donate like upper class. One can typically accomplish this by roughly maintaining the consumption per person that one has earlier in life (e.g. college or grad school). Sure, there is temptation to have consumption creep as is happening in most of oneās peers, but it is not technically difficult like rock climbing, or nearly as bad as living with hunger on a diet. An exception for this being effective may be if oneās consumption is visible to those who determine how fast one advances in oneās career, and they donāt appreciate oneās choosing of charity.
+1 to Parable of the Talents being excellent, especially given EAās relationship to scrupulosity.