What are the bad ideas you’re thinking about? I’m not clear on what they could be. Is it favoring disorganization?
I think planning and scheduling is the rational way to live life. I just fail at it when I try. I don’t think it was only due to self-coercion. It was also due to too little flex time. Now I think I was over ambitious with my schedules too, I didn’t try to get easy success first.
That would have to be your old blog posts and articles. If I found them persuasive I wouldn’t stop being persuaded because you stopped writing about it.
If I tried it out and thought I did it right but it didn’t work.
The fact that you no longer support TCS does make me more suspicious of it. And I don’t know everything about TCS, I haven’t read Curiosity Blog Archive – tcs basics. It’s the self-coercion stuff I think most about.
You didn’t share TCS ideas you’ve been persuaded of and talk about them or ask for that. I’ve expressed negativity towards TCS and have been open to debate about TCS for years.
Also I don’t think you’ve engaged with criticism that has been written like:
I have read that one and I think agreed with pretty much everything.
I don’t accept all of TCS and I think I’ve been skeptical of parts of it since the beginning.
Three ideas:
I think it is better to focus more on conflict resolution and avoiding self-coercion than it is to focus on self-discipline.
I think school sucked for me. I often didn’t pay attention in class because I wasn’t interested and didn’t want to learn what they taught. I think education where the children learn stuff they’re interested in would be way better.
I think it’s better if parents explain things to their children instead of simply giving moral commands.
Those are the types of ideas I associate with TCS.
I think adults know about stuff that are long-term beneficial for a child but they can’t persuade them of. Like brushing their teeth. It would be better if the child understood and agreed that brushing your teeth is good. I would lean towards coercing the child if he doesn’t want to brush his teeth ever. Because that’s the traditional practice while TCS is revolutionary and it seems like the best outcome for the child.
If you can’t be 100% non-coercive then I think doing more explaining and less coercing than the current society does is better.
Hmm. Have you always liked philosophy more than video games or TV @Elliot ? I like philosophy. I probably don’t like it as much as I may want to maybe. Reason I ask is because I feel like for me to like philosophy more than I already do I need to get good at it. I think whats what @Dface is sharing there. Kinda. That if he got good at philosophy he’d find it more enjoyable (I assume thats what “get to that point” means, but I could be wrong). Was that your experience? Or did you like philosophy more than other things more or less from the get go?
I really don’t know much about TCS. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I started reading your stuff a lot more only recently.
Hmm. The only “direct” TCS influence I’ve had is possibly reading old stuff from FI that had TCS themes in it and reading old curi posts that could be TCS heavy.
I think the others used language related to coercion in talking about scheduling but I don’t think I did. Though maybe some stuff I wrote talked about coercion without saying the word.
But uhh outside of the above influences most of my ideas on scheduling and tidiness (and possibly more) have come from a mix of places on YouTube and from self-help books.
Idk much about TCS. Do you think it ever got mainstream in any kind of way? Maybe it influenced some of the authors and stuff I read. Alternatively maybe TCS got some ideas from (I guess) bad self-help?
yeah. when i initially did scheduling and stuff that went kinda ok. issue i ran into was still not respecting the time and stuff. the game, or book, or show, or whatever was so fun i kept just consuming it way past my scheduled time, way past my intended bed time, which just messed a bunch of things up
I think possible now a days I could probably handle it a lot better but I don’t know.
Hmm. This thought occurred to me: I grew up muslim. During Ramadan when I broke fast and ate, getting all that food gave me a huge burst of energy keeping me up. It felt kinda the same with having games at the end of the day, I was “fasting” from this stuff all day and then playing it at night gives me a huge burst of energy where I want to keep going.
~that makes sense. I guess the way breaks were kind of presented to me: do a different activity for a short period of time before getting back to your main activity.
What time would you start playing games and how long would you play for?
no
some of what you say, like defending leaving cards out on a table, or scheduling something each hour, doesn’t sound like conventional, typical advice from YT or books.
Do you follow any people who know stuff about TCS on social media or substack or something? Like DD or any of his fans?
Uhh. I’d say around five. This is based off of trying to schedule myself. I would aim for around five. How long varied a lot. Maybe a couple days I would play for about 2-3 hours (the scheduling was very detailed in the beginning of the day, not as much later on in the day). Go to bed by 10. But depending on the game I could binge as late as 2 in the morning. Also it isn’t just games. I’ve binged manga and novels before. I guess TV too but I consume way less TV in general.
hmm. i agree.
the cards being left out on the table was just a thought. maybe it wasn’t clear but it was just a thought that came up. maybe i’m wrong about how i’m treating the cards on my table but is the general idea i had bad? like fixing up stuff when it actually matters? maybe a better example would be a cabinet in the kitchen that i use in my house to store cooking stuff. i want to better organize the stuff in there cause its kinda of a mess (not really, more so not neatly organized). part of me thinks i should, the other part of me is now starting to think I shouldn’t because I don’t cook. if i had a consistent cooking habit it’d make sense for me to.
when it comes to scheduling stuff each hour. i agree that its not the advice given. some advice i’ve heard says that people fail at that kind of thing because it may be too rigid or some other reason. to clarify: scheduling down to the hour is my idea (well I probably picked it up somewhere). more or less one day I wanted to schedule in high school and decided the method to do it by is scheduling every part of my day. i think i picked up this somewhere in the culture because i know general self-help stuff i’ve seen referred to people who do this. i think its pretty common.
i remember hearing/reading about time-blocking. idk if i then interpreted that as time-block a bunch of stuff every hour throughout the day.
Also: so are those the things that are TCS like to you?
Nada. I didn’t follow TCS. I never followed anything DD or any of his fans. Probably because I got into philosophy through Rand. I found you because I wanted Objectivist stuff. I think I remember seeing some DD stuff from your posts but at the time I was like if its not Objectivism its bad. I’ve shared before but I ignored a lot of you’re non-objectivist stuff for a while. I think many people discover you because of their interest in Popper/DD. I think I’m the odd one out in discovering you because of Objectivism.
I haven’t listened to basically any of your podcasts though in the last year. I listened to it way more before starting up tutoring. I used to put them on when I did chores or go for walks or do hobbies. I’ve listened to all of the FI podcast episodes multiple times.
I stopped consuming much of your pre-CF content around the time we started tutoring (I don’t think I’ve listened to a podcast of yours in over a year). But I think I’ve probably consumed much more of your pre-CF content.
As for direct TCS stuff, I remember reading some of the top posts on the (archived?) TCS site(?) Only an handful and they weren’t very long. I remember one where David was commenting on someone asking advice for what to do about a friend who recommended getting her child tested for aspergers syndrome(?). The vast majority of my exposure to TCS has been through your work.
I think a big thing that I’m thinking about with scheduling is issues with self-coercion, but I think that you agree that you shouldn’t coerce yourself into doing one thing over another or thinking one thing over another etc. Scheduling, like to do lists seems to involve these kinds of issues, and it seems like a good explanation for why things have failed for me. I’d be surprised if you thought that avoiding coercion applied to scheduling was one of the bad TCS ideas and I’d be super interested in talking about that.
I think that’s probably right (for me). But I wasn’t just reading your new stuff, I browsed around the archive a lot finding any topics that I thought were interesting.
I’d be interested in knowing what bad TCS ideas it seems like I have.
Neither, btw. Although I have seen some recent podcasts with DD as a guest that have popped up. I don’t recall anything about TCS in any of them though.
DD frequently talks about things from a TCS perspective without naming TCS. He’s an unusually dangerous intellectual because of how radical his ideas are combined with him being closed off to criticism and debate. People with poor error correction should stick closer to tradition, especially when they’re clever enough to make their errors sound convincing to people.
Also DD’s spent over a decade trying to destroy this forum and prevent you from having a tutor, and he’s been caught initiating force against me and breaking the (civil) law. Why not pick someone else’s podcasts given that context?
It’s reasonable to have 2-3 hours of game time after 5pm with a 10pm bedtime.
You have a problem here which is related to your attitude towards video games and life. It doesn’t sound like a scheduling problem.
One way to look at it is you’re showing self-destructive, addictive tendencies with games. Have you tried or considered quitting gaming? Sometimes people avoid a problem area, like gambling or alcohol, and go do other stuff and sometimes that helps them. Sometimes it doesn’t work, e.g. b/c they’re too unhappy with the rest of their life and struggle to do anything else that they enjoy to replace the enjoyment they got from their vice. But if they can enjoy other stuff instead then maybe they don’t need the vice. Another reason it may not work is if one denies their vice is a vice: if they don’t actually value getting free of it.
I’m not saying this is the correct perspective but I think it’s worth thinking about. I’m just trying to bring up issues to get you thinking for yourself about it.
I think you may have the misconception that if you run into a coercive conflict about an activity, then don’t do the activity. I know DD and LT have been spreading this misconception.
Avoiding coercion is broadly the wrong idea. The correct idea is problem solving, not problem avoidance.
When something seems coercive to you, you should evaluate if you’re dealing with a coercive conflict or not.
An example where there’s no conflict is: sticking your hang in a bag of scorpions sounds coercive to you. So don’t do it. You don’t want to do it; there’s no need to do it; there’s no conflict. Here, avoidance solves the problem.
A coercive conflict is when all options sound coercive. E.g. one may find studying coercive but also find not studying coercive. In this case, trying to avoid coercion by not studying doesn’t work. Some sort of problem solving and conflict resolution is necessary. You need to create new knowledge to make the situation better; there is no non-creative option like refraining from an action that will fix this.
If you avoid the activity, that falls under the general concept of picking a winner and a loser without resolving the conflict of ideas. Picking winners and losers around unresolved disagreements in your mind is bad; it’s better to view them as unresolved.
I know i’ve been dealing with this a lot. I thought I knew what coercion was and that one should avoid it. I didn’t seek out discussion about it or criticism.
I like that problem solving is the correct idea, cuz if I take on the avoiding coercion idea it’s like im a fixed individual who doesnt change their preferences or doesnt figure things out rationally.
Ahh ok that makes sense. I don’t think I like it when i choose a winner and loser. It’s nice cuz i get to choose something quick, but things don’t feel like they’re resolved. Some things I think I chose winners and losers were with college and jobs. Winners left and losers stayed
Mmm. I’d agree. I’m unsure, at times, whether my scheduling issues is due to scheduling issues or because of life issues. I have thought, at times, that life issues play a bigger role than just getting better at scheduling.
No. I do agree 100% that I have self-destructive addictive tendencies. Where I kinda disagree is that I may have given the impression that its bad with games. They were bad with games 4-5 years ago? Nowadays where it comes into focus is reading manga, reading webnovels, watching TV shows. I turn a lot of enjoyable stuff into self-destructive addictive stuff at times. I do this with food too. Certain times are much much better than others, so I don’t take it seriously (until it gets bad, I get frustrated at myself, things get better for a little bit and I forget).
I haven’t considered quitting because I’d have to get rid of enjoyable stuff in my life. I do think I need to work on managing these kinds of things (and I do think I’ve gotten better, but still binge enough to impact my life) but I don’t think quitting is quite a good option. Its not that gaming is particularly addictive. I just get self-destructingly addicted quite easily to many things.