- A homonculus is a tiny representation of a person
- It’s a common narrative (and fallacy) to imagine ourselves as a homonculus in control of our bodies
- We can use this fallacy, however, to our benefit
- Pretend that you’re a new homonculus, in the same body
- Look around and take stock of your surroundings
- Go over your plans and obligations with fresh eyes and see if they’re still aligned with your values
- Often you’ll realize that your plans don’t correspond with your values
- This approach is a good way of combating the sunk-cost fallacy, since the new homonculus isn’t burdened with the obligations of the old one
- This is also a good way of dealing with guilt, since guilt and sunk cost fallacy are similar in that they’re both suffering for past actions which cannot be changed
- Most people don’t feel guilty about not being able to snap their fingers and cure Alzheimer’s
- However, most people do feel guilty about indulging in bad behaviors
- The difference is that people don’t feel like they “could” have cured Alzheimer’s, but they do think that they “could” have changed their behavior without any preparation or retraining
- Most people have a miscalibrated sense of what they could do
- People don’t have complete control over their thought patterns, so it doesn’t make sense for them to get angry at themselves for thinking in a particular way
- Almost everyone is “psychologically fragile” insofar as there is at least one situation in which they’d do something that they regret
- Don’t berate your monkey brain, help it
- Willpower is scarce
- Most of the time you won’t be able to permanently willpower your way out of a rut
- At best, willpower is a stopgap, not a solution
- Most people’s sense of what they could do is broken because they don’t realize when the real choice occurs
- Example: staying up too late playing a video game
- The real choice is not to start “just one more round” that takes you past your bedtime and leads to you playing until 4:00am
- The real choice is starting the game in the first place
- When you make a choice that you regret, go back in time and look at all the choices that led up to the choice that you regretted
- Often, an earlier choice is far easier to change than the specific choice that you regret
- The key is to distinguish “real” choices from events that feel like choices, but aren’t
- Search for the decisions that make acting as you wish easy and natural, instead of requiring force and willpower
- One way to improve self-compassion is to pretend that there is someone else, about whom you care deeply, in your situation
- What would you say to that person if you saw them struggling?
- Would you berate them? Or would you feel compassion for them?
- It’s possible to feel compassion for yourself even as you’re struggling or failing
- Compassion doesn’t imply making excuses or even finding ways to improve – it is merely the warmth that you feel for a fellow human who is struggling
- Another way to improve self-compassion is to remember that you’re “half-monkey, half-god”
- The monkey in you is trying to steer the world
- But steering the world is difficult
- You should forgive the monkey some mistakes, and then help it get better at steering the world
- What does it mean to be a “bad person”
- People can pursue goals that you dislike
- People can be bad at pursuing goals that you like
- But what does it mean for a person to be “inherently bad”?
- People don’t have little stones embedded in them that tell you whether they’re good or bad
- Bad person is shorthand for one of two things:
- This person is pursuing goals that I oppose
- This person is untrained in skills that would be relevant to the current situation
- Asking whether someone is “fundamentally bad” or “fundamentally good” is a type error
- “Good” and “bad” apply to actions, and the paths that people carve through history, not people themselves
- This mindset doesn’t free you from morality, nor does it free you from having regrets
- However it does change how you view regrets
- Regrets are no longer indelible stains upon your character
- Rather, they’re messages from the past, with information about how to do better in the future
- When you find yourself doing something because otherwise you’ll be a “bad person”, unpack that
- Ask yourself, what does it mean to be a bad person?
- Don’t worry if your answers seem irrational or don’t make any sense – they’re still your answers
- Life isn’t about being a good person, it’s about doing good things and doing your best to ensure good outcomes