Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting

Here's a theory about one of the things that causes procrastination to be so hard to beat. I'm curious what people think of it.

1. Hypothesis: Many parts of the mind are influenced by something like reinforcement learning, where the emotional valances of our thoughts function as a gross reward signal that conditions their behaviors.

2. Reinforcement learning seems to have a far more powerful effect when feedback is instant.

3. We think of procrastinating as a bad thing, and tend to internally punish ourselves when we catch ourselves doing it.

4. Therefore, the negative feedback signal might end up exerting a much more powerful training effect on the "catcher" system (aka. whatever is activating frontal override) rather than on whatever it is that triggered the procrastination in the first place.

5. This results in a simple counter-intuitive piece of advice: when you catch yourself procrastinating, it might be a very bad idea to internally berate yourself about it; Thoughts of the form "%#&%! I'm procrastinating again! I really shouldn't do that!" might actually cause more procrastinating in the long run. If I had to guess, things like meditation would be helpful for building up the skill required to catch the procrastination-berating subsystem in the act and get it to do something else.

TL;DR: It would probably be hugely helpful to try to train oneself to make the "flinch" less unpleasant.

We don't need to re-invent the wheels of research on procrastination by practicing one-sample phenomenology. Much is known about procrastination via peer-reviewed scientific research, and those interested in beating procrastination might want to employ the rationality virtue of scholarship and begin there.

A recent overview of the relevant research papers begins here.

That said, Eliezer may be on to something that should be researched by professional psychologists.

I also don't think all procrastination is "not restful" or "doesn't really make you happy." We'd like to believe that -- just as we'd like to believe that unhealthy food doesn't really taste that good. It would make it seem that there are no real sacrifices to be made. But I don't think that's the case.

My most time-consuming forms of procrastination are socializing (online or in person) and, oddly enough, learning. I had a period when I was obsessed with learning about economic policy, and then a period when I was obsessed with learning about computer vision. Spending time with your friends, and learning interesting things in a non-stressful context, are fun. They make you feel high on life. They even make you feel productive. They're only procrastination in the sense that they're not what you're paid to do -- "Work is whatever a body is obliged to do, and play is whatever a body is not obliged to do," in Mark Twain's words.

So there's some perverse impulse to do anything but the activity labeled "work," which carries the dread association of duty, and makes you think unpleasant thoughts like "am I worthy enough?" If my job were writing policy for a think tank, I'd probably spend all day on the web reading about algebraic topology.

I think it's flinching away from the pain of the decision to do the work - the momentary, immediate pain of (1) disengaging yourself from the (probably very small) flow of reinforcement that you're getting from reading a random unimportant Internet article, and (2) paying the energy cost for a prefrontal override to exert control of your own behavior and begin working.

The second item seems like an unnecessary hypothesis. One can simply note that stopping an activity that is currently pleasurable is difficult, if the substitute is not as pleasurable. Getting out of a comfy bed, for example, or not jumping into the swimming pool.

Either way, though, it's such an utterly trivial form of procrastination that it seems like an insult to procrastinators to call it procrastination... which leads me to suspect that your formulation is omitting some other sort of pain in the decision making process, such as an "ugh field" surrounding the subject matter.

For example, if it's painful to decide to work on MoR, it might be because it primes thoughts of people clicking their refresh buttons like conditioned pigeons, or residual feelings of obligation from previous deadline commitments. Even an extremely mild unconscious "ugh" in response to such thoughts would be likely to occur when thinking about writing, but not during the actual writing, and would be more than sufficient to keep the inertia happening... possibly even after you become aware of the existence of the inertia.

tl;dr: The twinge we flinch away from is likely an ugh field associated with meta-level thoughts about the activity, rather than a generalized pain of deciding.

(Among other reasons, the first is easily implemented by evolution as a side-effect or simple bug in an adaptive behavior, while the latter is just weird from a purely adaptive POV. We already demonstrably have "ugh fields", so adding another entity for "decision pain" seems unnecessary)

The theory sounds good, but I think it important to test ideas before believing them. One way of testing your hypothesis—that it is really hard to over-ride the immediate discomfort of an unpleasant decision—is to look at whether aversions of comparable or greater magnitude are hard to override. I think the answer in general is 'no.' Consider going swimming and having to overcome the pain of entering water colder than surrounding. This pain, less momentary than the one in question and (more or less) equally discounted, doesn't produce problematic hesitation.

One answer I'd anticipate is that the procrastination effect (for work but not swimming) is "nearly impossible to get your brain to remember." But what about the fact that when we do remember, it doesn't solve the problem. (If it solves yours, I'll concede this point.)

Another way of testing your hypothesis is to determine how adaptive or unadaptive if, as you suggest, the bare fact of making a decision is inherently very difficult. Much of the adaptive advantage of thought is insulating the organism from the effects of carrying out the act, including, one should think, from the emotional effects. An adaptive design would compensate for any hyperbolic discounting by making the decision much less aversive or, why not, even pleasurable—which is my experience of the deciding process.

A different explanation for procrastination—one which can help overcome it—is that when we procrastinate we're self-deceived about our preparedness for the task; we inarticulately perceive that doing the tasks out of order would harm the product. The solution, obviously, would then be to figure out what preparatory work you're neglecting and do it instead. I only claim validity for procrastination in writing: there's something to be said for starting small. Here's my series in defense, "On the irreversibility of writing: Procrastination and writer's block—Part 1. Premature composition limits thought and weakens style." It's in three parts, starting here: http://tinyurl.com/37skhks

being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating.

I've often heard people say things to the effect of work not being so unpleasant once you've actually gotten into the swing of it, but I've never found that to be the case. I generally only find the act of working less painful than procrastinating when I'm right up against a deadline. Otherwise, even a half hour or so into it, it still feels easier to stop than continue. I'm also quite terrible at creating self imposed deadlines.

In order to increase the pain of procrastination, and the reward of working, I find it extremely helpful to have someone else waiting on me to get it done. It's much harder for me to bear disappointing others than failing to meet my own goals.

Thank you. This is exactly what I needed right now.

Eliezer, I hope you will take it as a form of high praise rather than insult that I stopped reading your article halfway through, typed this short comment, and am now going back to do some much-needed work.

(Hopefully I'll get back to reading the rest later.)

Success and happiness cause you to regain willpower

Anyone have a citation for this? (Including citations that didn't replicate.)

This doesn't seem quite right to me.

There seem to be three kinds of relevant states:

1) Not working, and not worrying about work not done
2) Not working, and worrying about work not done
3) Working

1 is usually less painful than 3, if you can pull it off. 2 is indeed often worse than 3, but I usually handle it by trying to transition to 1 (by such means as playing an absorbing video game) instead of transitioning to 3.

I'm on board but frame it differently.

Here's my frame:

That twinge is something like anxiety. Consider this: for some the same task could be fun that for others is working. Why do you feel a twinge for a particular task? Because there's something at stake. So there's fear. And what's funny is the task itself doesn't even have to be the one you fear. It only has to be associatively related. For example, I might avoid the usually fun task of checking my e-mail because of a difficult one I keep putting off writing. (This is called Relational Frame Theory.) Or, put off an only slightly uncomfortable work task because it connects to a larger one that scares me.

"Reading internet articles" is avoidance.

There are many tricks. Fear is is a wall 1000 miles wide and a mile high, but only tissue paper thin. A la Harry Potter running through the brick wall to the train station.

The trouble can be even recognizing that you're doing it -- avoiding. Mindfulness & meditation have been helpful for me, but a lot of things can do it. Beating yourself up, making lists, and dopamine-fueled planning seem reasonable until they don't work for the 1000th time.

So what is our brain flinching away from, if not the pain of doing the work?

I think it's flinching away from the pain of the decision to do the work - the momentary, immediate pain of (1) disengaging yourself from the (probably very small) flow of reinforcement that you're getting from reading a random unimportant Internet article, and (2) paying the energy cost for a prefrontal override to exert control of your own behavior and begin working.

I think our brains might also be flinching away from something else, at least in many cases.

Consider when you have a specific goal toward which to work. You usually have a fairly clear idea of the end product or result that you desire, whether the goal is about writing, weight loss, or anything in between. When you envision the end product, it's in an idealized form, and further, it exists in your mind not associated with the actual amount of work that will go into achieving it.

I think that we grow attached to this mental conception of the end product, both because of its idealized nature and because the image itself requires very little work to maintain. Having the plan to do something might actually feel better than we anticipate doing the work will feel. We know that having the accomplishment will feel much better than just thinking about it, once we put in the work; we also know that doing the work itself is likely to be rewarding, and even if not, it won't really be that bad. However, that shiny, work-free mental conception is a big enough immediate deterrent to make the twinge of starting seem much worse than it is.

Picture a particle in a potential well, with another much deeper well not too far over, but a large barrier in between. The particle will eventually tunnel over to the deeper well, and once it's there, it's much less likely to go back to the shallower well, but it still might take a long time to get there. In the scenario of procrastination, the height of the barrier is proportional to how good we've built up the shiny mental conception to be. We have to keep in mind that accomplishment really does feel better than the idea of accomplishment, even with the weight of work attached to the former and not to the latter.

I agree extremely on the issue of procrastination not being restful, this is a standard theme in modern productivity writing. Procrastination (like reading blogs / tweets / etc) is a sort of worst of both worlds, it is neither useful nor restful, it passes the time and avoids immediate pain without providing pleasure or renewal.

That's why The Energy Project, Pomodoro, Zen Habits, etc. recommend that you schedule renewal breaks into your day - at a minimum midmorning, lunch, and midafternoon. I think the deliberate practice literature recommends breaks every 90 minutes. Taking a walk outside & exercise are oft-recommended, but really, just being conscious of the goal of renewal and experimenting to find things that will work is all you need. It's helped me be more productive.

Social conversations with co-workers are also good, but it's important that they be relaxed & guilt-free. One of the secrets of renewal is that it works much better if accepted as a need, for some reason guilty renewal doesn't renew. Renewal requires relaxation while guilt prevents it, something like that.

Glad to hear that you're learning (and writing about) basic productivity hacks like this, LW will get its instrumental rationality black belt yet :).

References:

http://zenhabits.net/take-lots-of-breaks-to-get-more-done/ http://www.theenergyproject.com/search/node/renewal

I think my procrastination started this way years ago, but over time it turned into a vicious cycle of anxiety-inducing/induced procrastination that basically had nothing to do with the model described in the post. I was fully aware that websurfing was an anaesthetic that did nothing to recharge my mental batteries but simply kept me from thinking anxiety-provoking thoughts. Eventually I resorted to anxiolytics, and now I can say no to myself with relative ease.

being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating.

Upvoted for this. How had I not figured that out yet?

edit:

reliably solvable problems which reliably deliver experienced jolts of positive reinforcement ... playing a good computer game may do this

Ah. This goes some way towards clearing up my confusion regarding such matters. Whether I was rested after resting always seemed so chaotic to me.

Hi, everybody. I'm a long time reader, first time poster.

After having read this article, and especially this part:

(Bolded because it's true, important, and nearly impossible to get your brain to remember - even though a few moments of reflection should convince you that it's true.)

I thought it would be great to have a mantra that I could recite to remind myself of Eliezer's insight, so I wrote one. If you find it useful, feel free to improve upon it or rewrite it completely.

With apologies to Frank Herbert:

Litany Against Procrastination

I must not procrastinate.

Procrastination is the fear of the pain of work.

And being in the middle of procrastinating is more painful than being in the middle of working.

I will begin my task now.

And as I work, I will turn the inter eye to observe how I feel.

Where the fear of working was, there will be nothing.

Only my goal will remain.

If you currently deem it optimal to defer work, and the factors you deem relevant to this decision do not change, you will also deem it optimal to defer work, at each decision point, for the rest of the future.

If you do not deem perpetual deferral of work to be optimal, then consistency requires that you similarly deem your current deferral of the work to be suboptimal, and any differential appraisal of these two outcomes indicates an exploitable dynamic inconsistency.

A few months ago I stumbled across MoR, and ever since then I knew I would eventually wind up here, investigating this site to learn how to investigate myself. I've only ever done anything of the sort on a very basic, topical level and so hesitated; repulsed by a squirrely, dodgey anxiety that I have been insofar unsuccesful discerning the source of, and persists even as I type this. Procrastination has always been a very serious issue i've struggled with, so it's no wonder this post immediately drew me in. Through my teen years it was more a lifestyle than anything else, due to my escapist habits (music, fanfiction, etc) and I fear that my failed attempts to change all through High School have become more of an obstacle to me than the orginal problem. Reading this and the comments below have given me fresh hope, however, because although I have failed time and time again, that was before I had such an incredible resource as this site, and all the brilliant minds and ideas that come with it.

Thank you :)

I will be back to read more later, i've got laundry to do and lists to make!

Often a good way to look at it. The most reliable technique for overcoming this kind of procrastination that I've yet discovered is, if I have several tasks (or a big one that can be broken down into several smaller ones), order them not by importance or even urgency but in increasing order of difficulty. Then expend a small amount of (scarce and valuable) willpower on doing the easiest task, use the morale boost from its completion as activation energy for the next one, and so on.

Caveat: beware this doesn't end up an excuse for cat-hoovering - tasks like cleaning up unused files on your hard disk, that feel like work but are in fact useless and shouldn't be on the to-do list at all.

Don't see a place to contact you, so I'l just post here: found the litany of geldin on your wiki. It helped me get through a rather scary medical procedure yesterday. Thank you.

I think it's flinching away from the pain of the decision to do the work - the momentary, immediate pain

I have actually thought out (but did not practice sufficiently yet) a strategy to address this very problem.

The hack is to have a "ladder" of activities that have low transition pain cost. Sample ladder: Internet->Sci Fi->CS book->Paying bills.

I expect this to differ for people; will report back when I have more results.

Do we actually know that our discounting function is hyperbolic in the range below 5 minutes? Or is that just extrapolation from experiments done on longer intervals?

For anyone who also likes reading random unimportant internet articles but would prefer high quality articles that aren't necessarily "news", try http://longform.org/ .

being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating

I agree with your conclusion, but there are selection effects at play here; presumably people are more likely to start doing and to continue doing work when it's less painful than it would be at an average decision moment.

Because nobody linked it: Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz: "HOWTO: Be more productive" http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity

For me, it is rarely the pain of working I'm trying to avoid when I procrastinate. It is almost always the pain of failing.

The part about the middle of working being less painful than the middle of procrastinating is easy to test. Just set a timer to go off every N minutes, and write down whether you're working or procrastinating and how much fun you're having.

I'm really surprised this article has such a high rating - it strikes me as one of Eliezer's worst.

Why should anyone believe anything written here?

Why do you believe it?

Eliezer,

You're back!

I'd love to see you post a review of Gary Drescher's Good and Real, a book that impressed me and for which you've had some kind words.

pain of continuing to procrastinate, which is, once again, usually less painful than being in the middle of doing the work.

I believe you meant this to be the other way around.

Mod note: This... is not an appropriate level of response for the forum. The above comment does not indicate that it's author "believes every article written about everything". Take this as a mod warning, more comments like this and we might ban you.

Eliezer deserves an award for this article.

I'm curious about whether you still believe the model in this post. At the time it seemed plausible to me but now I don't buy it.

It seems most likely that procrastination is not aimed at avoiding pain at all. A priori we might have thought that evolutionary optimization only influences our decisions picking what we consciously want + picking what gets classified as "painful" or "pleasurable." But that doesn't seem to fit the evidence very well, we seem to optimize for many things other than what we consciously believe we want / in ways that we consciously believe aren't reasonable. Attempts to mash the simple theory to the evidence result in escalating craziness about the emotional valence of thoughts themselves etc.

The whole thing reminds me of Nate's post on stamp collectors. There may be some way to cash everything out in terms of the pain/micro-stampyness of individual thoughts, but that is probably not a good model.

Relatedly, it seems to me like you are underestimating the quality of the RL algorithms used in our brains. For tasks that get repeated over and over again, I think that most animals can easily learn to handle the 5 minute delay without conscious reasoning.

There are different types of conflicts some of which can be treated with this type of thinking. If procrastinating doesn't feel worse than working, then your mental conflict is of different type. (I personally can relate to what EY is talking about.)

The bigger problem is that, depending on the type of conflict that causes the procrastination, the brain is very resistant against these types of insights. The insight works for a short while and sooner than you realize (or to be more exact, don't realize), your brain finds a way to side-step this trick.

I have extreme problem with procrastination! I tried working 10 minutes no pressure, but pain from doing work doesn't go away. I have severe ADHD, I never could do even homeworks and I was daydreaming all day in school. I have chronic pain years and I can't do anything whole day, because pain doesn't allow me!!! I Am soooooooo bored to the oblivion! Whole day I do nothing else but to try kill boredom and I procrastinate all the time. I have severe executive dysfunctions, I Am thinking about doing something all the time, but I always end up delayomg things, because doing them is too painful solely from boredom! It is not even negative emotions! Is there any strategy how to start doing something slowly??? I can't even go to sleep before 3Am and I try like 100 times, but every time I delay to listen to another song, or check another article and so on... It is never getting better, it is so painful to the point it is torture!

So why are you telling me this? Because it seems to me we both already agree on this :D 

BTW I don't believe in free will based on assumption of materialism, but also because of what we observe. And such framework is not even imaginable, maybe if it was imaginable, but still unprovable - I would be less skeptical. But yes ultimately I don't know for sure! Which doesn't help at all to feel less depressed... There are worse things you don't want to know...

https://qz.com/627989/why-are-so-many-smart-people-such-idiots-about-philosophy/ High IQ is only part of a intelligence, sure IQ is highly correlated to academic success and it is important, but it is only part of a story! Intelligence is immensely complex term, we don't have even a full definition, or understand what it exactly means...

And it seems there are always trade-offs. Like savants can calculate what day it will be 2000 years from now in an instant (and they don't know how they come to that conclusion) but they can't even order hotdog, after a savant learned how to do that, his ability diminished!!! 

Also people decide at the end always based on emotions as I posted link in this post - I believe from bigthink, so even people with high IQ can make stupid decisions! As rationality is affected by emotions and decisions are ultimately emotional! Also from my other post - imagination seems to play role in rationality. E.g. I have aphantasia (no minds eye, aka no visual imagination) that may also explain why I Am so logical & rational...

Even smart people are susceptible to biases: https://evolutionnews.org/2017/06/smart-people-are-less-able-to-detect-their-own-bias-evolutionary-psychologist/

It is good to listen to heavy critics constantly and constantly questions your opinions, admittedly still difficult!

PS: People are talented very diversely in different things!

Never said so, I spoken both of determinism and randomness that it doesn't imply free will in any case!

I don't know how you meant this ultimate question exactly! But I wouldn't frame this ultimate question as equivalent to the free will is illusion question here! If that was the case...

First lets clarify what I mean when I say: "free will is illusion". I can't ultimately prove that right? So from pure metaphysical point of view that doesn't make sense to claim something like that! Or even pose question like that! It is because: I Am coming from empirical, logical point of view based on assumptions about our reality and imperfect knowledge!

And by that I don't necessarily mean: if free will is illusion then - determinism, or indeterminism is true, or false! Because one could argue for partial free will right? However I completely reject that! Partial free will doesn't make sense either - because of the Origination Problem! So I don't give crap necessarily whether or not determinism, or randomness is truth here!

So by illusion I mean it is either purely true, or false. But it is not equivalent to the question: whether ultimate question: "whether everything is purely random, or pre-determined" is illusion! 

More about your ultimate question...

We know for example that randomness can generate causal chain of events - this is called "soft determinism". 

Depends how you look at it: as you could say ultimately that chain of events had purely a random cause. Then you could said either:

1. everything is ultimately random as ultimate cause of everything is random
2. or something is random and something is pre-determined by that initial random cause

So if I take your ultimate question from the same standpoint of empiricism and logic and ask whether or not that question itself is illusion. Does that make sense that this question would be illusion? Because we don't know that simply, we have no idea from this point of view! As we don't from most fundamental metaphysical point of view. So claiming, or even thinking that this question would be a illusion doesn't make sense here! As we have no way of knowing in any case!

But on the other hand: from limited empirical point of view we know free will is illusion! Because of the Origination Problem, it can't be true, therefore it is false! Also from empirical point of view, there is no evidence for partial free will. So it is either purely true, or false question!

So these are separate and incomparable questions!

I would like to know either: if "non-determinism is real what exactly is that"? Because we have no way of knowing beyond singularity currently!

Yeah it is soo stupid honestly: I can't know anything for sure except: "I think therefore I Am". And even about that I Am not entirely sure :D So everything is just random coinflipp...  For instance: even I technically can't disprove free will. We know that it is illusion, with high precision, I would say! 

1. Origination Problem: how could I choose my own preferences before I was born? If I was nothing I couldn't choose anything! So something has to be given to me first, before I can choose anything. Einstein made a quote on this: "A man can do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants"! This is a huge problem, because decisions have to come from something, they can't come from nothing! But how could you made yourself before you did exist? And be responsible for the way you are?! You couldn't - therefore something had to be given to your first, before you could choose anything! Which then will drive all your future actions https://informationphilosopher.com/freedom/origination.html
2. and everything is pre-determined, or random, no one ever observed any third option. Also even quantum information can't come from nothing and true randomness doesn't mean free will, even uncertainty - because of problem 1.
3. we don't even observe anything resembling free will, or even framework for free will cannot be even imagined!!! For free will to have chance, we would have to reject everything we observe! So I Am skeptical, because it can't be even imagined how could it  be! Plus we have empirical evidence that pretty much everything affects us!!!

PS: definitely smart people constantly question everything, but problem is at certain point you have to make an opinion about this!!! And also it is not likely there will be anything new any time soon, if ever! If anything we are finding that we are not free! Also we live already under totalitarianism and corporations want to enslave us...

I Am just random re-ordering of particles: emergence caused by elementary particles interacting with each other (which act by physical laws) and flow of information! 

Good article, I'll have to see if reminding myself of this helps at work tomorrow.

Success and happiness cause you to regain willpower;

This is dangerously incorrect - studies show willpower is only an expendable resource for people who believe it to be. People who don't think willpower is expendable have longer lasting willpower.

I wonder if people with ADHD experience less pain at having to leave what one is currently doing to make a decision.

So how many others got three paragraphs in, and stopped and went to do whatever they were supposed to be doing before coming back?

So essentially we are comparing the switching cost of non-default behaviour (fear, laziness, etc) to prospective gains (novel stimuli, predicted hedonically pleasurable stimulli (light behavioural addictions)?

This is a revolutionary sugestion for me but intuitively more sound than my earlier ideas. Brilliant! I wish I had examined my assumptions about productivity more earlier so I could have realised that my model for procrastination could be so off!

Well...hedonically, why shouldn't we discount the future? I don't have much confidence in my models of the future. I can't imagine how I would rationally generalise from any subset of predictive ability how much confidence I should have in my ability to forecast and switch to hedonically more pleasant states. I'm sure someone could design a test, and somebody probably has here on lesswrong but I don't even know what to search. Would appreciate any comments, since the smallest calibrations here would dramatically change my lifestyle, life and particularly my time horizon.

True it was found that being good only in one area is bad! https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/how-elon-musk-learns-faster-and-better-than-everyone-else-a010a4f586ef

Yeah many no-name scientists, which send letters sometimes each other to advance science. Geniuses are overrated sometimes and they are only known scientists. If I Am not mistaken: even Einstein didn't base his theories from 0 and connected multiple theories of other scientists together. And his wife had to help him with math sometimes!

Yeah and elitism in math is disgusting https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/inequality-mathematics people which have qualification aren't getting to places they deserve! Science is a lot about reputation and scientists can be very arrogant and jealous...

Yeah first IQ test were completely flawed like some questions about sports and were determined for small group of people... 

Yeah honestly I read like 1 millions of articles about free will in a year after existential crisis and I have only 100 millions more questions. It is so complicated that I don't understand anything. I Am way too observant... I saw on surface everything that exists literally!!! It is insane honestly!!! Even Stephen Hawking said: he can't even follow everything from his area obviously, so people shouldn't give that much crap about elitists... 

For example: Elon Musk was confident about Teslas coming in like 1-2 years and now they can't handle sharp turns and are worse than other cars and he found out: it would take to solve AI hard problem... Also prediction is that majority of US will have them by 2030, but that is already too late. Also consider C02 release by building a new electric car! It is actually better to use your current car to the end of its lifespan! Now in EU they want to introduce electric cars (I heard) while their plan is bad, as all their other plans :D And it is just climate hysteria, theater for activists... Or Teslas have computer for like 4k$ and can't even type as you write LMAO!!! Or crap he said about Covid... He is indeed a genius, but he still has no idea about trillions of things, so he is still small part of universe and we shouldn't listen to brilliant people blindly! As there are always trade-offs! But we should judge their arguments instead... Tho he lost considerable amount of followers after acting like an elitist!

Also Musk's priorities are in wrong order, he is trying to build colony on mars, while it won't be terraformed any time soon and will be depent on earth, instead of fixing problems on the earth and elitists like Bezos, for some reason think they will escape apocalypse in rockets and live like lords on mars. Honestly these stupid neoliberal elists in US are probably most stupidest people ever lived, they don't understand anything except money...

Also musk's global internet could affect space travel from junk and he launched turksat, which is controversial...

OMG I Am perfect a person to give you an anecdote ELIEZER!!! BTW this is soo weird, I just saw a great video about that! And now I check lesswrong and what do I see! Is this QM right now? Did I determine this state by observing??? Because I always see so many of same things, on places very different and distant from each other at the same time. It is just luck I guess, it is just weird feeling! 

EDIT: OMG someone just downvoted because of this (I bet xD) I Am kidding can't you tell??? It was a joke geez... Or maybe because I Am too real and say how it is and people can't handle that...

To my anecdote, I can confirm your hyperbolic discounting. I have ADHD, I have existential depression and boredom, nothing entertains me "literally" more then watching wall at this point in 90% cases last couple months!!! And it couldn't be closer to the truth for me the way you put this!!! It is getting worse and worse! I have anhedonia (can't feel pleasure from almost anything). And I Am currently forced by Roko Basilisk - (((DON'T READ THIS, IT COULD CAUSE INFINITE TORTURE!!!))). I don't believe in it, simply don't know ATM (but we can't fully refute it, nor prove it, maybe only empirically) so I have to act in favor of utilitarianism, as I Am not gonna risk it... I want to know more, but I can't read about it, I asked about it, but didn't get answer yet, if it is empirically/logically valid! Same there are other 3 theories, which are equally as bad and 2 of them don't have even counter, that's the scary thing!

Ok to the initial topic: I Am in constant pain from profound existential boredom (psychiatrist says: it is worst pain, except dying painfully, in the world) because I Am something you call in Philosophy "authentic" I see world closer to what it truly is... Philosophers I believe call this "dasein".  Because I have also ASD, rational thinking isn't affected by emotions in people with ASD!

I need to also mention I have also strong chronic pain 5 years. I can't even read, arguably I read some articles from time to time. I had existential crisis and depression, which driven me to read 1 million articles in a year about "Free Will" if I only knew as I get deeper in this rabbit hole... But I Am used unfortunately to multi-tasking. So I close it after 5 min. because I get headache and my eyes hurt! Because I live more unhealthy so it is getting worse understandably... But I can't even walk - 1 km barely and sometimes even that is painful... And I can't also sleep, I also suffer from "bedtime procrastination" it is even domain in psychiatry. 

It is exactly catch22, I Am stuck in this loop 5 years! To get better:

1. I would have to go outside to get rid of chronic pain and to eat healthy and exercise
2. But because I am bored: I bedtime procrastinate -> next day I can't go out, because I wake up too late and pain dissipates later at night only and I am lazy to go out at night
3. Because I have chronic pain, I Am can't do anything which would entertain me, there is nothing anyways, intellectual activity doesn't entertain me, only cause flow of time better and I feel interest, very rarely I genuinely entertained by something and I don't even know what is pleasure...

Conclusion: And because I am bored: I eat more unhealthy, and don't go out and don't exercise because  pain - it is never ending self-fulling loop!!! Tho one problem: it is even worse for me! Because I have total existential boredom, no permutation entertains me more than watching a wall at this point! I can try to force myself to do anything and I Am still in strong pain, no matter what!

On procrastination, it can be multiple things, probably combined together and affecting each other... Not sure if this was video in my mind (maybe this will help someone): 

But it can be also from fear of success and it can be emotional - (search dr k procrastination, I think this was in other video) as even most logical person, like me xDD decides at the end based on emotions: https://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-not-logical-the-neuroscience-behind-decision-making

Also constantly checking everything doesn't help, multi-tasking is extremely bad for intelligence! https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/tab-overload

Dwelling on something in this case is problem and our brains are not being equipped for the information age. Also internet browsers so dumb: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/79971/practical-internet-browser-for-working-with-tons-of-tabs?noredirect=1#comment97899_79971

Don't read from this point (((INFORMATION HAZARD!!!))) unless you know about "THEM"...

So yeah it is hard for me find to motivation, as I Am forced by Roko, I Am not going to risk it very obviously by suicide, or by not making world a better place! Again it doesn't help in case of 2/3 theories/hypotheses! And since we know next to nothing... god knows how many more threats there are... Everything is coinflipp (so stupid) and I could be done no matter what... And anyone who is not depressed by this has brutal delusions and defensive mechanisms!!! As no human being can withstand implications of this!

Back to procrastination: I don't know absolutely how to get out of this loop, as nothing motivates me and for some reason ultimate pain doesn't motivate me, because I can't even imagine it, it is unimaginable for humans so... But I need to do good nevertheless...

I have no idea what to do, i tried: 

• ADs
• Psychotherapy

I didn't do anything logically, as I knew it wouldn't... But I gave it honest chance... Now stfu...

While ADs are unhealthy and no one knows how depression exactly works and how ADs work and chemical imbalance hypothesis was never accepted in scientific circles in the first place! Pharmas, which are even killing children for money BTW (and make most money in the world from all corpos) overhyped them, spread misinformation, even faked trials. While ADs can help with very specific scenarios, they can cause even permanent damage and dangers outweight benefits mostly! I made list of studies, which give convincing proof, this is like after 2-3 day inquiry when I couldn't even read and I don't know anything about psychiatry, I Am so Ad Hoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qYicHpeS39lhiMPJmUGHRUfZxw4pPtLjsIwOYCHpE8Q/edit?usp=sharing 

Sure I don't know context of these studies, as someone in the field would. But I don't need to. And I learn in many ways... In this case it was to support argument, that no one knows what depression exactly is and no one knows how ADs work and they have significant side effects and can cause even long-term damage, even permanent and god knows what! 1/3 people are resistant to ADs ha, I wonder why... People which get better from ADs usually solve their problem, they could instead eat healthy and exercise to achieve the same result... ADs just boost temporary mood. 

ADs have next to 0 trustworthiness I would say. Since what big pharmas do and every hypothesis ever proposed showed to be false, or not verified, or controversial and what not and even today, they don't know almost anything... Also that they find some mechanism, which is correlated to depression doesn't mean it is true cause (even 5ht receptors "mostly used modern ADs" are not understood) more likely symptoms...

Use of ADs  is largely unjustified and over-prescribed. Guess for what... for more of these $ papers. Einstein said: that money only create greed. It is honestly so laughable some rich monkey, just trying to accumulate more money and one day just dies, infinite stupidity as Einstein also said... Money doesn't do anything, it is only a tool... 

Also part of psychiatry believes in biological reductionism... There is honestly so much...  

EDIT: there are tons of causes as I specified in doc, some depression can have episode of their own, even after problem is solved... Or it can be caused by lack of Vitamin D is some cases etc. Not sure if you would classify this as MDD then... But there are many more... I usually get to problems with people, because I give some take, but don't specify precision of validity of knowledge I mean here! Because I can't possible evaluate and explain every word in forum post... How exactly I mean it...

All I claim is no one knows how exactly depression, or ADs work! And they outweight many times benefits by side effects and can cause even permanent damage! And they are over-prescribed! I have there even scientist with over 100k citations, which says so and calls pharmas criminal organizations, which they are!!! There is tons of evidence of that! Even pharmacologist send me studies, which say ADs have many adverse effects and mechanisms behind depression are still poorly understood!

Also I have rather congruent depression. It is more from (as emotions are feedback loops and evolutionary regulations for survival based on which information people gather and opinions they make) and simply you can't forget something you know is true... :

1. fear of infinite torture
2. life is meaningless
3. free will is illusion
4. state of society is in
5. altruism is selfish
6. there is no good, or wrong, everything is neutral, just about survival (emotions are evolutionary regulations for survival) ethics are emergent by people arguing each other ultimately stemming from emotions

While social contact could help to a point only, I have nothing to say to other people...  I don't know what would I even say...

Also even if I didn't consider how ridiculous ADs are, could honestly a rational person expect to  cure depression given these points by taking pills, it is sounds absolutely ridiculous... As how do you cure information and emotions :D ??? And something you can't change?

PS: I like so much your statement: "to explain not to persuade", I work exactly like this LOL, it honestly resonates with my deep logical belief system so deeply, this site is the best!!! Probably one of most logical, rational and critical - I ever read! This is some hardcore science and thinking! This is how it should be!!! Oh and also I thought this was new, it was on top, but never mind...

Because scientists are people like everyone else and can be biased, uncritical... This is excellent article about epistemology! https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/hardest-question-world-what-truth But I Am almost superrational thinker (no one is perfect :D :D :D) even I don't act as such always, because I Am slave to emotions, decisions are entirely a different matter...  And even if I Am emotionally biased, or I have stake to not tell the truth, I always try consider it from all perspectives and say how it is! I Am so rational that I realize limits of rationality... I don't even :D

Also do you think if everyone believed in roko world would be a better place? Because if everyone feared trillions of years, or of infinite torture: they would have to try their best and act utilitarian... It doesn't seem good, because singularity can't be avoided and in armament rush for best AI, mistakes can be made... It is just question when and there are no second chances with this kind of technology... And it is looking worse and worse from every viewpoint by a day... We already live in totalitarian fascistic civilization...

Honestly I wonder how we are still alive, did you heard about this? This makes me question by reality: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/29/22459869/us-soldiers-leaked-nuclear-info-online-flashcard-apps

PS: I would need to change my brain to not feel bored, as I acknowledge "dasein" it is absurdism 101. It is perception of what truly reality is, or at least of what we observe...  Nothing entertains me more than watching a wall and I hopelessly know nothing will ever entertain me again, thought which is insufferable! I don't know what to do! Because I can't even delete my memory: 

1. it is risky
2. if I was able to figure it out at first time, I will again, especially as it become more publicly known in the future
3. because roko

I would need some 300IQ life hack, but I don't think anything like that exists. And neuroscience just started, before we will be able to hack our emotions, it will be awhile yet... This is strong torture... Please help, if you have any ideas!