Struck by a market-making provocation from today: "Imagine a world where you love how you make choices and you love how you're directing your attention, because tech inventors are competing to figure out how best to help you live as you intend."
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Is this a product people want? To what extent do people even endorse making choices they love vs. choices they "should" make such that they're sufficiently virtuous or self-sacrificial or discerning? I'm disheartened by how few people intend anything in particular for their lives
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I'm often disheartened by the same, but I'll play the optimist here. There is some population—sure, not everyone—who feel an intermittent vague uneasiness about the way they seem to be passengers in their own lives. It is easy for me to imagine good things happening (cont):
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1. Bob hears people talking about a new kind of super-diary, which people say helps them feel more intentional
2. After the 5th mention, the chatter connects with Bob's prior unease
3. Bob tries it, *does* become more intentional
4. Bob's genuinely grateful for this development
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5. Now Bob's more aware of how he feels when he makes choices he loves vs. those he "should make"
6. Over time, he develops a taste for the former, participates in Tristan's market, which makes him even more self-aware, etc.
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Part of what makes this easy for me to imagine is that this story has already happened, for tons of people, through avenues like meditation or CBT.
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One more reflection: I think part of the trouble is talking about what "people" "want" in any durable sense. People change. We can even support those we love in changing, in endorsing by default the choices they might previously have only endorsed on their best days.
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Indeed, environments can change people in these kinds of ways. If you move to a different city, you'll likely become a different person in some interesting ways. etc etc
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Agree! It's just that AFAICT, it's often assumed that dysfunctional incentives are primarily or entirely on the side of product-makers rather than consumers, and I'm not so sure. CBT & meditation have a market in large part because people "should" prioritize "mental health."
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It’s such a funny Trojan horse! I myself started meditation years ago because I wanted to “focus better” (ie for my work), and of course, after I became a regular practitioner, I understood how self-defeating that framing was.
Have you expanded on this anywhere? I don't meditate consistently but feel like I got some benefit from hearing what I'm supposed to get from it, even if I can only get part way there without meditation.
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I don’t think I can explain in words; has to be experienced. That’s part of the whole weird paradox. But as an intuition pump, this is vaguely relevant. slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/uni
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