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(How do we draw ligaments between ideas in different threads?! Is this deeper than merely an aesthetic or organizational function? Hmm...)
Using hash links like you did is fine. But feel free to submit a feature request in the ‘Veritula – Meta’ thread if you have any ideas beyond that.
This isn’t a criticism. A criticism must point out some shortcoming. Please read ‘How Does Veritula Work?’
But what is the import of the story to the present debate?
That sounds like a criticism. It implies that you don’t see the import.
How far out does the graph of irrational ideas go? Is the argument that: discipline, grit, drive, tenacity and more concepts in this web are all bad/irrational? This is quite a claim. Is "work" bad? Irrational? Work to me means discipline, at least in large part...
I want to understand this. Take the horrible and widespread case of: "I hate my job, and all other jobs that seem available. But I need money to live." How can the conflict be resolved? What is one to do until they resolve it? Surely it is rational to work to make money... Yet in this case, this requires forcing oneself to do something unpleasant; hence the rational thing to do in this case requires discipline.
Apparently I remain unconvinced of this. I see you've defined discipline in #3833, will continue, there. (How do we draw ligaments between ideas in different threads?! Is this deeper than merely an aesthetic or organizational function? Hmm...)
Conceded re: what is practical in the case of this job, or others that are hated. In the sense that the debate here relates to careers vs passions in general, I think the question of what is practical remains...
"No need to make this kind of tradeoff..."? Please explain.
Take another passion, such as playing the guitar. If one dislikes anything that stops them from playing, it's still impractical to only pursue guitar, isn't it? In general, one would run out of savings and be in poverty. It's practical to avoid that.
I don't feel I had/have any criticism of your post (#3746), or of the Rand story, so left it as a comment.
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Extra context for those interested
Most models of the mind are wrong. They treat distractions as inevitable annoyances—exploitable bugs in our evolutionary wiring—that must be overridden rather than understood. The supposed antidote is to train the ability to overcome distractions. On this view, willpower, self-control or grit is required for success: something you must strengthen so you can push through resistance. We are at war with our own minds, and many things simply suck and must be endured. Discipline = freedom.
From a Deutschian / TCS perspective, this framing is deeply mistaken. Distractions are not mere inevitabilities. They are signals—indicators that something may be wrong or misaligned. Taking those signals seriously is rational; dismissing them merely because they are “distractions” is irrational. The relevant question is not how to suppress them, but what problem they might be pointing to.
Addressing such problems does not consume willpower. It consumes creativity. Creativity is — among other things — the currency of intentional action: generating and criticizing ideas about what to do next. When we force ourselves through distraction-signals, we spend creativity to override our own warning systems—and train ourselves not to trust our minds.
Optimizing for ever-stronger defensive strategies is therefore a poor strategy. It amounts to stockpiling and mobilizing massive amounts of valuable creativity in order to do something harmful: coercing yourself through unresolved conflicts. Hyper-discipline can work —the army being an obvious example—but it often achieves productivity by damaging the inner environment, suppressing signals rather than resolving their causes.
A more effective optimization target is a life in which unwanted distractions arise less often. This shifts attention away from defense and toward shaping what we do and how we do it so fewer internal conflicts arise in the first place. And when distractions do occur, we should deal with them through rational sound judgment—by resolving the underlying problems—rather than swatting them away only for them to cause more damage and come back even fiercer.
Focus is usually defined in coercive terms—working without distraction or despite it. This framing sneaks discipline in through the side door.
- Deep Work: Focus is the ability to concentrate on cognitively demanding tasks without distraction.
- Indistractable: Focus is doing what you intend to do despite internal and external distractions.
- Hyperfocus: Focus is intentionally directing attention while deliberately ignoring everything else.
What all of these share is the assumption that focus is valuable because it resists distraction. Distraction is treated as interference to be pushed aside.
I think this coercive component should be removed. At the same time, empirical experience makes it clear that people do differ in their ability to stay engaged—and that this ability can improve. So something real is being gestured at, but mischaracterized.
Here is my Deutsch-compatible explanation of it:
Focus is the stickiness of engagement with a chosen problem.
It is not about heroic self-control—suppressing distractions or forcefully pushing competing thoughts away—but about how reliably engagement sustains itself without requiring repeated creative intervention. Creativity enables intentional action; focus determines how often that intentionality needs to be actively renewed.
When focus is weak, engagement is fragile. Minor distractions, impulses, or shifts in attention repeatedly pull us away, forcing creativity to be spent again and again just to re-establish intentional direction.
When focus is strong, engagement is stickier. The threshold for a distraction to take hold is higher. Distractions still occur, but they are rarer. And when they do arise, they are less disruptive, because our sticky focus allows us to handle them using sound judgment rather than succumbing to poor judgment.
Focus is a capacity we can train like any other skill. Periods of sustained engagement stretch that capacity, and—when followed by adequate recovery—our ability to stay engaged grows stronger
This reframing preserves what the popular literature gets right—that sustained attention exists and matters—while rejecting its coercive foundation. It replaces self-war with problem-solving, and willpower myths with creativity and judgment.
I would love to hear criticisms of this theory of focus. It is a core part of my book and, I believe, a necessary incorporation into a Deutschian / TCS view of the mind—one that fully addresses and refutes the popular focus literature referenced above.
So it is a relative claim about an explanation, relative to another, not versus some absolute criterion of goodness.
So what? I didn’t mention an absolute criterion. My original criticism already applies to both relative and absolute criteria of quality (what you call “goodness”).
Similar to a crucial test …
But that’s exactly where HTV differs from Popper. Popper doesn’t give a theory points when it survives a crucial test. HTV does. From BoI chapter 1:
… testable explanations that have passed stringent tests become extremely good explanations …
The criterion for HTV applied to 2 explanation is not justificationism I think. It allows to say explanation A is better than explanation B, which is equivalent to: explanation B is worse than explanation A. So it is a relative claim about an explanation, relative to another, not versus some absolute criterion of goodness. Similar to a crucial test (e.g. Eddington): we refute Newton's theory and keep Einsteins, that is not a claim about the goodness of Einsteins theory, that theory merely has survived, it has not gotten "goodness points". It could be refuted always later on by any better theory, in which case we would drop it too.
Yes, the criterion for democracy is not a computational task, but an abstraction that constrains computational tasks. In the same way: the criterion for HTV is also not a computational task, it constrains the possible computational tasks that attempt to quantify HTV.
We understand computational tasks by being able to program them (as per Deutsch' criterion). But we understand criteria/ principles/ axioms/ theories ... (non computational tasks) in another way: by varying them and eliminating the variants that do not solve the problem the principle purported to solve.
For example:
a+b=b+a (in arithmetic) is a principle/ axiom that we understand by elimination of possible variants (a+b =/= a ... a+b =/=b ... etc)
but 3+5=5+3 is a specific transformation that should be understood via a computational task: adding 5 to 3 and then 3 to 5 and comparing both outcomes, via a program.
FWIW, if I was hiring, and I was looking at a resume of someone who always ‘played it safe’ and was very concerned about what others think, I wouldn’t hire them. Whereas I would hire someone who takes smart risks and cares about truth over popularity, even if they have a resume ‘gap’.
Discipline means arbitrarily favoring one conflicting idea over another. ‘Arbitrarily’ meaning favoring without resolving the conflict.
You don’t actually know which idea is better, if any, before you resolve the conflict. So siding with one before then is irrational.
Instead of practicing discipline, practice resolving conflicts between ideas and thus finding common preferences with yourself: ideas you wholeheartedly agree with, have no reservations about.
Veritula helps you with that.
skill
Self-discipline isn’t a skill. It’s an anti-skill and irrational.
Should suffering be avoided? Not if it's useful..?
Self-coercion should be avoided, yes. When we coerce ourself, we are not creating knowledge and instead arbitrarily favoring one idea over another. If a part of you disagrees that something is useful, then don’t do it!
You can always find a common preference with yourself. Problems are soluble. Do not act on ideas that have pending criticisms.
https://veritula.com/ideas/2281-rational-decision-making-expanding-on-2112
Just because lots of things are excruciating doesn’t mean life necessarily involves those things. Life doesn’t have to be difficult in this way.
You can find a passion, have fun 100% of the time, and never coerce yourself. (That’s an ideal we can fall short of – if we ‘only’ have fun 90% of the time, that’s still infinitely better than dooming ourselves to a life we hate.)
It would be fantasy/reckless if, for example, you were in your mid 40s, had a family to take care of, and had no savings.
Why does it have to be a career? You could try it for a year or six months or whatever. If you don’t like it, you switch to something else. That’d be fine.
You didn’t mark this as a criticism, but it sounds like one. Consider revising your idea to mark it as a criticism. (No changes to the text necessary for that.)
The questions here are over what is practical, secure and strategic, all largely in the financial sense--or so I think.
There’s nothing practical about working a job you hate. There’s nothing practical about fighting yourself.
Where does one draw the line between passion and security?
There’s no security in not pursuing your passion, and there’s no need to make this kind of tradeoff anyway.