[Game] Last one to post wins!

[Luminesce]

Soup time

[Glaurung26]

oooh 🥣😋

[Miichu]

No classes today, time for a morning walk

[Luminesce]

I've been wondering recently why humans avoid mental effort even though it's literally exclusively a positive or neutral thing. I always had it in the back of my mind that avoiding effort = saving calories, but I didn't stop and think about how few calories thinking itself takes, especially compared to how ridiculously "wasteful" in calories being happy & playing is.

 

I just googled this question and I immediately see "It has been suggested that physical effort and mental effort may rely on the same underlying motivation system in the brain,"¹ which unfortunately answered my question on the spot - our brains avoid mental effort because mental effort feels equivalent to physical effort, and avoiding physical effort = avoiding wasting calories - and so we only act, physically or mentally, when there's sufficient risk or reward on the line

 

Man, humans are amazing, but we're like a very early alpha version of the kind of beings that should rule a planet

 

Maybe all the science fiction shows/cartoons that have the apex sentient race of every planet being some other stupid thing is really the most realistic scenario, it seems life stops improving very much well before reaching an optimal existence because it runs out of immediate reason to too early

 

 

Anyways, force yourself to be conscious and think more often to become a greater lifeform. There's no downside, just like how exercise is always a good thing when food scarcity isn't a problem.

Edited December 6, 2022 by Luminesce

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Miichu said:

I passed the exam I thought I wouldn't pass. I just saw the grades

 

Congrats 

 

[Misha] Yay!   

[Miichu]

What are you all getting for Christmas?

[Guest]

I know what mental effort feels like and it's nothing like physical effort in any way. Physical effort is fun for me. Mental effort is a chore unless it's something I want to do. Physical effort is a wonderful feeling in and of itself. Mental effort is draining. This comes from someone with two advanced degrees on top of my STEM degree and it was no small feat of mental effort. It wasn't handed to me. I didn't just ride it out, it took insane and intense amounts of mental effort and motivation or I wouldn't have finished any of it.

 

I walked the line of a knife edge every day for close to a decade to accomplish this all the while working to support myself and my expenses for college and university.

 

Many people I knew from all walks of life failed at a fraction of what I accomplish and I accomplished it three times. The straight odds were about 1 in 100,000 for me to do what I did (I just calculated it). It took luck, intelligence, social skill, charm, money, opportunity, drive, willpower, motivation, support from others, restraint, staying up late, getting up early, doing things I hated, getting over a lot of drama, being nice, not being a push over, avoiding pitfalls, staying in with the right crowd, avoiding addiction, keeping jobs, etc.

 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Miichu said:

What are you all getting for Christmas?

 

I am getting a wallet that holds credit cards and other cards that I can put on my keychain so I have only two things to manage and not three. I have two pockets, one for phone one for keys/cards. No one uses cash here anymore, so that's not needed anymore and my old wallet can be retired. I know what I'm getting because my friend asked me what I wanted and I told her. Otherwise I would just get my favorite cheesecake from grandma and who knows what else to eat because she loves to cook and especially when I suck up everything she cooks like a vaccum cleaner.

Edited December 6, 2022 by Bear

[Glaurung26]

@Luminesce🤔 It might be a least effort -> most reward calculus that our subconscious runs. Under the assumption that the more efficient we are, the more we can get done, so the more stuff we can get. Similar to how since we started cooking food, we digest quicker and have more hours in the day for doing stuff. But this is all evolutionary lizard brain stuff. As far as I know we're the first species to be self aware enough to ask "could we be doing better?" 

 

And besides evolutionary laziness efficiency, there's also societal pressures keeping us dumb. On the individual level there isn't a downside to handling your life as smartly as possible. But religions, group organizations and corporations don't want you critical thinking too much. There's also the idea that if you turn your brain off, you don't see the flaws and seams in media and thusly enjoy it more. To an extent I guess that makes sense but eventually I get the "feeling" that something isn't right which leads into critical thinking shortly after. Maybe some people can indefinitely shut their brain off but I can't forever. 

 

I think there's more societal "reward" or incentive for collectivist, low effort thinking and conformity. Some groups encourage critical thinking, individualism and debate but I see less of those than the tribal, dogmatic collectivist groups. In my experience the reward for high effort, critical thinking is a solely solitary endeavor. You have to be prepared to be the only one or in the minority that come to your conclusions. Many other people are going to just pick a team and think what they're told to think. 

 

Then again, how much time in your day do you really have to research and learn all of human history, knowledge, and skill? Eventually you will inevitably have to take someone on faith that they know something factually. That's why we have professionals and experts to know that stuff for us. And we hope that they're not full of sh*t because we don't have time to fact check all 7 billion other humans.

[Breloomancer]

good morning

 

i don't think that people avoid effort and work; you see people doing high effort things that give little material reward all the time, just for fun. i think really what it is is people avoid unstimulating work, which makes sense