Great idea. Related: My wife and I have been sending each other video game achievement style images (with ChatGPT) to celebrate our little wins and keep us going in a busy household. I've also recently been planning goals for next year, and hit upon making my goal tracker look like the old Quest for Glory V character UI. Instant major (recurring) motivation boost.
Takeaway: Try mining your own past for the easy things that bring you joy, and weave those in. Personal UIs are free now, so do the fun thing.
I can't imagine anything more unappealing than exchanging AI generated images with my wife every time one of us cleans the kitchen or finishes reading a book on time. Goes to show, people really are different!
Personally I don’t want to see any image generated by AI as it is just all fluff and adds no value. A simple text saying you did the thing would be sufficient
my partner would lose so much respect for me if I did that. and that respect was hard-won, she had a mediocre dude as a longterm ex (the type who would probably send LLM-generated achievements) and basically had to remap her base expectations to fit me being minimally pro-active and emotionally regulated
For this incentive to work, you have to only send your partner songs that you have earned through accountability. Otherwise, you can not do the thing, but still send your partner a song.
For the carrot to work, you have not also give yourself unlimited access to carrots. Which means for the most part, it still functions sort of like a stick.
You have to deprive yourself of the privilege of sending your partner a song in order to motivate yourself to earn it back.
This is the general problem with these kinds of gamification schemes. They can work, but they do require the self-discipline to not let yourself acquire the goal without doing the thing.
This strikes me as pretty similar to gamification, honestly. You went to the gym this week 1/7
I guess if it works, but man I think we need to do some work as a society and species to untangle how messed up we've become that we need a little jingle to motivate us to do good things for ourselves and make healthy choices.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Humans have been well and truly figured out, and we’ve built an ecosystem for ourselves that is predatory to every single one of our desires and weaknesses. For many, the reward signal received when doing a good and healthy thing is a whisper compared to the fog horn of brain chemicals just perusing through social media gives you. Humans are desensitized, and I think things like this article are people re-hacking their reward mechanisms to try and take back control.
Citation not required; the premise is not required to be true because the conclusion is independently verifiable (albeit overstated): "we’ve built an ecosystem for ourselves that is predatory to every single one of our desires and weaknesses"
But I'm not sure the attention economy is different in this respect from civilization's traditional franchises: the hope and protection rackets run by religion, governments, militaries, businesses, etc. We've been trading beer for labor in the oldest recorded history and probably before. But how would understanding that help?
So: not "citation needed", but back to TFA: can {proposal-x} help liberate people from predation (and self-destruction)? It's fruitless to wish there were no predatory human systems or realize everyone's out to get you; the question is how to cope.
The commenter is suggesting that counter-programming might not be the answer to programming. I would go on to suggest deprogramming, reducing the reactivity of any reward system, and then targeting the deepest values. Traditionally this is occasioned by failure (as a lesson) or getting old (heeding the older wise elders), or breaking the ego (in recovery, severe trauma (war, moral injury), etc.) so it's mostly a no-go zone, but in rare cases of excellent therapy or practice or great relationships one can make progress.
Tracking systems (joyful or otherwise) I think help not in the day-to-day reward hacking (any drug results in resistance) but to give a concrete picture of the value of time and habit: when I well and truly realize how little I do actually contributes to my/y/our future, I am motivated to really look backwards from the future.
Life is tangled. "Healthy choices" are now choices, previously they were side effects of trying to not die.
Exercise, for example, is bullshit make-work that only some subset of people are wired to enjoy for some reason (never worked out how, I'm gonna guess they're either wired to receive reward signal for this, or it's social activity; half of life's motivation is low-key sexual drive anyway). I don't. So I have to find whatever proxy that works for me.
100 years ago this wouldn't be an issue, because I'd naturally get fit, because daily life required substantial amount of physical labor that we've since automated away.
I also thought I naturally didn't enjoy exercise and had resigned myself to at best forcing myself to go to the gym and grind out a session on a rowing machine or something. I then, in one of the best impulse decisions I've ever made, decided I'd go check out the climbing gym nearby and it turns out I just hadn't found the exercise that clicked for me.
On topic for the wider thread of gamifying doing things that are good for you, bouldering in particular works perfectly with my brain. Every few weeks there's a whole set of new things to try and climb to the top of, and its often as much about working out a sequence of moves that works for as it is about brute strength.
I've never really been able to make exercise stick for an extended period but this time round I'm on about 18 months of consistently making it to the gym twice a week or so and pulling on plastic holds for a while. Its (mostly, unless I have a bad session) fun while doing it, the combination of exercise and problem solving means my system is flooded with endorphins and dopamine afterwards, and I'm fitter than I've ever been.
If you can find exercise that's "play" for you, that's the trick.
I like hacky sack and kettlebells. I can play hacky sack for 15 minutes, wherever I am, and easily keep my heart rate between 160 and 190 bpm. I can do kettlebells in my bedroom in 15 minutes, and stay pretty strong and capable. They're both genuinely fun for me, and leave me feeling better (lower stress, more alert, stronger, more agile, more attractive, less like a lazy slob).
I never could spend 10 minutes to and from the gym, and another 45 there, or anything like that. I feel lucky to have found these things I do like.
IME a huge proportion of people who exercise do so (at least at first) because they enjoy the results (including how they feel afterwards, eg endorphins), not doing the exercise itself. The idea that only some people are wired to enjoy it and you're not one of them sounds like an excuse not to endure some discomfort to reap the benefits.
I have never felt what people describe endorphin rush to feel like. Or runners high or anything remotely like it.
I'm almost 40. I had a pretty physically active childhood through my 20s, and I just never remember ever feeling good afterwards. It's very important for me to keep exercising to avoid diabetes, but I struggle mightily to make myself keep doing it nowadays because it is miserable to me
No one can really explain that to me. A lot of "maybe it's this, maybe it's that" but no help fixing it so I can motivate myself to keep doing the work
It sucks. I have a lot more empathy for the "I just can't make myself do it" crowd than I used to. There's a missing circuit in my brain or something and there's no brain mechanic to fix it.
I for one know I don't enjoy the benefits - not enough to trigger any reward loop anyway. It's a known limitation for me, making it hard to consciously form habits in general. Many people have this.
(It's probably a matter of degree as well as kind - in my case, whatever the intensity/delay critical threshold is, it's sufficiently low to allow functioning, but high enough that exercise doesn't stick.)
> Exercise, for example, is bullshit make-work that only some subset of people are wired to enjoy for some reason (never worked out how, I'm gonna guess they're either wired to receive reward signal for this, or it's social activity; half of life's motivation is low-key sexual drive anyway). I don't. So I have to find whatever proxy that works for me.
I honestly think nobody enjoys the exercise itself. The real motivation is second order effects like becoming more appealing to other people.
> I honestly think nobody enjoys the exercise itself. The real motivation is second order effects like becoming more appealing to other people.
I imagine some must; sensitivity to second-order effects as a drive is arguably a circuit known to not be present in many people - I'd go as far as speculating that it's an anomaly to have it.
If you're actually doing the thing who cares how achieve it.
The problem isn't when people do things, it's when they spend all their time coming up with the game and then stop playing, which makes it just a form of procrastinating yet far too common.
Are we in some sort of historical outlier in this regard? What do you know about this? Like were people in medieval times way more motivated than we were today or something?
People in medieval times didn't generally have lifestyles that needed extra push to go be active
It's very likely that they would also stay home and rot on their phones given a chance to. But that was never an option for them
That's sort of my point though. Look at developed societies that exist today that don't have the same fitness problems. What are they doing differently?
I really enjoyed "Thinking Fast and Slow", unfortunately it may not be Daniel Kahneman best work, and unfortunately a victim of the reproducibility crisis
None of Kahneman's work was affected but some of the work he uses as examples absolute were. It's not all bad but there are parts that should probably be removed or prefaced to new readers especially since Kahneman accepted (RIP) the some of the criticism, that or some spiritual success without those warts
Great idea. Related: My wife and I have been sending each other video game achievement style images (with ChatGPT) to celebrate our little wins and keep us going in a busy household. I've also recently been planning goals for next year, and hit upon making my goal tracker look like the old Quest for Glory V character UI. Instant major (recurring) motivation boost.
Takeaway: Try mining your own past for the easy things that bring you joy, and weave those in. Personal UIs are free now, so do the fun thing.
I can't imagine anything more unappealing than exchanging AI generated images with my wife every time one of us cleans the kitchen or finishes reading a book on time. Goes to show, people really are different!
You really can't see anything positive in celebrating achieving stuff with someone you love, just because AI is partially involved?
I dunno, that feels like an unproductively strong disdain towards AI. But like you said, people really are different, I guess!
edit: I realise I'm assuming AI is the issue here, maybe it's not?
I assume it's a combination of feeling the same way if they just sent eachother feel-good stickers, and involving AI for... some reason.
That is correct. It's basically saying that you made an effort when you didn't.
Personally I don’t want to see any image generated by AI as it is just all fluff and adds no value. A simple text saying you did the thing would be sufficient
Yes. My partner would tell me to fuck off if I did that.
my partner would lose so much respect for me if I did that. and that respect was hard-won, she had a mediocre dude as a longterm ex (the type who would probably send LLM-generated achievements) and basically had to remap her base expectations to fit me being minimally pro-active and emotionally regulated
Quest for Glory! Fond memories of picking warrior, wizard, or thief; and the transition from sunny III to IV.
AI Slop images interchanged...... Jesus
There's a failure mode here.
For this incentive to work, you have to only send your partner songs that you have earned through accountability. Otherwise, you can not do the thing, but still send your partner a song.
For the carrot to work, you have not also give yourself unlimited access to carrots. Which means for the most part, it still functions sort of like a stick.
You have to deprive yourself of the privilege of sending your partner a song in order to motivate yourself to earn it back.
This is the general problem with these kinds of gamification schemes. They can work, but they do require the self-discipline to not let yourself acquire the goal without doing the thing.
This strikes me as pretty similar to gamification, honestly. You went to the gym this week 1/7
I guess if it works, but man I think we need to do some work as a society and species to untangle how messed up we've become that we need a little jingle to motivate us to do good things for ourselves and make healthy choices.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Humans have been well and truly figured out, and we’ve built an ecosystem for ourselves that is predatory to every single one of our desires and weaknesses. For many, the reward signal received when doing a good and healthy thing is a whisper compared to the fog horn of brain chemicals just perusing through social media gives you. Humans are desensitized, and I think things like this article are people re-hacking their reward mechanisms to try and take back control.
> Humans have been well and truly figured out
[citation needed]
Citation not required; the premise is not required to be true because the conclusion is independently verifiable (albeit overstated): "we’ve built an ecosystem for ourselves that is predatory to every single one of our desires and weaknesses"
But I'm not sure the attention economy is different in this respect from civilization's traditional franchises: the hope and protection rackets run by religion, governments, militaries, businesses, etc. We've been trading beer for labor in the oldest recorded history and probably before. But how would understanding that help?
So: not "citation needed", but back to TFA: can {proposal-x} help liberate people from predation (and self-destruction)? It's fruitless to wish there were no predatory human systems or realize everyone's out to get you; the question is how to cope.
The commenter is suggesting that counter-programming might not be the answer to programming. I would go on to suggest deprogramming, reducing the reactivity of any reward system, and then targeting the deepest values. Traditionally this is occasioned by failure (as a lesson) or getting old (heeding the older wise elders), or breaking the ego (in recovery, severe trauma (war, moral injury), etc.) so it's mostly a no-go zone, but in rare cases of excellent therapy or practice or great relationships one can make progress.
Tracking systems (joyful or otherwise) I think help not in the day-to-day reward hacking (any drug results in resistance) but to give a concrete picture of the value of time and habit: when I well and truly realize how little I do actually contributes to my/y/our future, I am motivated to really look backwards from the future.
Life is tangled. "Healthy choices" are now choices, previously they were side effects of trying to not die.
Exercise, for example, is bullshit make-work that only some subset of people are wired to enjoy for some reason (never worked out how, I'm gonna guess they're either wired to receive reward signal for this, or it's social activity; half of life's motivation is low-key sexual drive anyway). I don't. So I have to find whatever proxy that works for me.
100 years ago this wouldn't be an issue, because I'd naturally get fit, because daily life required substantial amount of physical labor that we've since automated away.
I also thought I naturally didn't enjoy exercise and had resigned myself to at best forcing myself to go to the gym and grind out a session on a rowing machine or something. I then, in one of the best impulse decisions I've ever made, decided I'd go check out the climbing gym nearby and it turns out I just hadn't found the exercise that clicked for me.
On topic for the wider thread of gamifying doing things that are good for you, bouldering in particular works perfectly with my brain. Every few weeks there's a whole set of new things to try and climb to the top of, and its often as much about working out a sequence of moves that works for as it is about brute strength.
I've never really been able to make exercise stick for an extended period but this time round I'm on about 18 months of consistently making it to the gym twice a week or so and pulling on plastic holds for a while. Its (mostly, unless I have a bad session) fun while doing it, the combination of exercise and problem solving means my system is flooded with endorphins and dopamine afterwards, and I'm fitter than I've ever been.
If you can find exercise that's "play" for you, that's the trick.
I like hacky sack and kettlebells. I can play hacky sack for 15 minutes, wherever I am, and easily keep my heart rate between 160 and 190 bpm. I can do kettlebells in my bedroom in 15 minutes, and stay pretty strong and capable. They're both genuinely fun for me, and leave me feeling better (lower stress, more alert, stronger, more agile, more attractive, less like a lazy slob).
I never could spend 10 minutes to and from the gym, and another 45 there, or anything like that. I feel lucky to have found these things I do like.
IME a huge proportion of people who exercise do so (at least at first) because they enjoy the results (including how they feel afterwards, eg endorphins), not doing the exercise itself. The idea that only some people are wired to enjoy it and you're not one of them sounds like an excuse not to endure some discomfort to reap the benefits.
I dunno man.
I have never felt what people describe endorphin rush to feel like. Or runners high or anything remotely like it.
I'm almost 40. I had a pretty physically active childhood through my 20s, and I just never remember ever feeling good afterwards. It's very important for me to keep exercising to avoid diabetes, but I struggle mightily to make myself keep doing it nowadays because it is miserable to me
No one can really explain that to me. A lot of "maybe it's this, maybe it's that" but no help fixing it so I can motivate myself to keep doing the work
It sucks. I have a lot more empathy for the "I just can't make myself do it" crowd than I used to. There's a missing circuit in my brain or something and there's no brain mechanic to fix it.
If you don't get the endorphins afterwards, that sure sounds like not being wired to enjoy exercise.
I for one know I don't enjoy the benefits - not enough to trigger any reward loop anyway. It's a known limitation for me, making it hard to consciously form habits in general. Many people have this.
(It's probably a matter of degree as well as kind - in my case, whatever the intensity/delay critical threshold is, it's sufficiently low to allow functioning, but high enough that exercise doesn't stick.)
> Exercise, for example, is bullshit make-work that only some subset of people are wired to enjoy for some reason (never worked out how, I'm gonna guess they're either wired to receive reward signal for this, or it's social activity; half of life's motivation is low-key sexual drive anyway). I don't. So I have to find whatever proxy that works for me.
I honestly think nobody enjoys the exercise itself. The real motivation is second order effects like becoming more appealing to other people.
> I honestly think nobody enjoys the exercise itself. The real motivation is second order effects like becoming more appealing to other people.
I imagine some must; sensitivity to second-order effects as a drive is arguably a circuit known to not be present in many people - I'd go as far as speculating that it's an anomaly to have it.
> I honestly think nobody enjoys the exercise itself. The real motivation is second order effects like becoming more appealing to other people.
I, actually, do enjoy the exercise itself. Although, it doesn't prevents me from procrastinating going to the gym and being in terrible shape.
Okay but like, why?
If you're actually doing the thing who cares how achieve it.
The problem isn't when people do things, it's when they spend all their time coming up with the game and then stop playing, which makes it just a form of procrastinating yet far too common.
Are we in some sort of historical outlier in this regard? What do you know about this? Like were people in medieval times way more motivated than we were today or something?
People in medieval times didn't generally have lifestyles that needed extra push to go be active
It's very likely that they would also stay home and rot on their phones given a chance to. But that was never an option for them
That's sort of my point though. Look at developed societies that exist today that don't have the same fitness problems. What are they doing differently?
I really enjoyed "Thinking Fast and Slow", unfortunately it may not be Daniel Kahneman best work, and unfortunately a victim of the reproducibility crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Replic...
None of Kahneman's work was affected but some of the work he uses as examples absolute were. It's not all bad but there are parts that should probably be removed or prefaced to new readers especially since Kahneman accepted (RIP) the some of the criticism, that or some spiritual success without those warts
And when you start Rick Rolling and Nickelbacking each other, it's a strong signal that it's time to break up.
I'd say if it's both doing it, it's a strong signal for the opposite.
Geez these comments. Good luck with love in your personal lives HN! No wonder geeks get a bad rep
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