I'm going to put on my Boomer pull-yourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps hat, but are you concerned about the loss of grit resulting from changing your behaviors without the drug?
This is certainly worse for the individual, but at society scale, the cost being the obvious devaluation of willpower is way too high. Way too high because everything good in that society was built almost exclusively by driven and strong-willed individuals.
I don't think we need to treat every bad thing society does as only needing a "toughen up" solution, instead we should fix the root cause.
An extreme example would be if the government poisons your water, maybe some medicine is ok. We should un-poison the water too, but I'm ok with medicine in the meantime.
Instead we collectively shit on them and force them into the most useless lifestyles ever devised - effectively pushing paper on rigid schedules or they don’t get to eat.
I’ve thought about this one quite a bit. The world has narrowed a whole lot to define acceptable behavior and who is allowed a seat at the table.
Almost all those “strong willed” individuals of the past who actually built things had lifestyles that would have gotten them entirely shunned from society today.
It’s not impossible but even compared to 30 years ago it’s an entirely different world for such folks. The way I “came up” in life would not be possible today due to the gatekeepers of “respectable society”.
Needing drugs to fit into that incredibly narrow and basic framework of a life should be of no surprise to anyone. Only a few of incredible luck and willpower and probably even naivety will survive that filter.
This whole topic is the epitome of “show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome” - entirely predictable, and it’s what society seems to want.
Willpower is important, I agree. Almost everyone needing willpower to not eat, though, is a fairly new phenomenon. If anything, the new drugs restore the balance that existed before —and if willpower is a limited resource, actively help society by returning to us what is taken by the relentless grind of profit maximization.
For a bit. The grind will not sit still.
It's really a matter of incentives and proper valuation.
Many moral vices naturally decline with age as physical senses and hormones dull and life loses novelty. It may be a comforting fantasy that we can somehow link our inevitable physical decline to a story of moral progress and assume that our accumulated wisdom would protect us from the folly of youth if we were somehow thrust again into our younger bodies.
But what if instead moral progress is about finding the right way of living? About spending more time with your kid than with a screen.
Maybe the virtue wasn’t in getting over the wall but finding yourself on the other side and choosing it because it is better? Society puts up walls all the time to prevent people from finding themselves on the wrong side of the wall. Nobody ever talks about the “grit” of the addict persistently dodging law enforcement to score their next fix.
Maybe the problem is society putting walls in the wrong place. If that’s true, does it really matter how you get over the wall?
If I can change my behaviour and achieve good health outcomes, relatively painlessly, why on earth would I not?
This comes across to me like people who won't use painkillers - I should feel the pain, masking it is fake, there is virtue in suffering etc. Turns out those people often end up with secondary complications to (for example) muscle damage, because they've adapted their movements so much to avoid using the painful muscle that now everything else is tense, strained and locked up.
Better living through chemistry, 100%.
I didn't take the GLP to help me with addictive behavior traits beyond my diet, but I observed tertiary benefits of the drug.
As I've titrated my dose down to zero, I've retained those habits and my weight. I'm in the best shape of my life and mentally healthier than I've been in over a decade.
My understanding is that that GLP1 drugs don't actually have this effect, as much as we know so far.
Because she went on GLP-1 to lose weight.
There's probably generally a bit of correlation. But just because someone can be very focused and go to extreme lengths in one aspect of their life doesn't mean they can consistently do it in every aspect of their life.
https://ro.co/weight-loss/serena/
Her use is an advertisement, it's marketing. Her story as to why she's using it is a fiction, a fabrication.
Done by the same people who demonstrably treat ADHD as just "laziness"
I’ve found that the general act of leaning into challenges and mild physical discomfort has a ripple effect on my mind, and all types of addiction and dopamine seeking behaviors become automatically less interesting- almost exactly like what people report on these drugs. If I take a cold shower or work out every morning even when I don’t feel like it- pretty soon I’m eating healthier and limiting my alcohol, caffeine, and screen time without even really trying to.
That said, it only works if you manage to actually do it. It’s much better to get over addiction with a drug than to continue suffering from the addiction, and be unable to escape, especially something that causes as much damage as alcohol can.
One idea I had was to set a deadline for overcoming an addiction, and to just use the drug if you reach the deadline and the mental approach is still unsuccessful.
Peoples' neurochemistry differs enormously. One person's positive reinforcing experience is another's nociceptive hell. (source: Ph.D. neurophysiologist here)
Arguments like yours presuppose humans have free will, that it's widely distributed, and if $whoever would just get on it, they'd progress.
More and more, it appears what we have is the perception of free will, not the real thing - whatever that actually might be.
The basic idea seems to be at the core of both a lot of modern self help gurus advice that seems to actually work for a huge fraction of the people that really commit to them (David Goggins, Wim Hof, etc.) as well as modern psychotherapy systems like CBT and ACT that are proven clinically effective.
How many people are really trying this approach, and it not working for them? More often, I see people saying it sounds like it royally sucks (which is true and basically the entire point), and never trying it- which is valid, but doesn't really demonstrate that it wouldn't work for them.
It absolutely is a "nociceptive hell" at first for everyone that tries it, but when you connect that with intention, purpose, and meaning it eventually transforms into something almost enjoyable. Becoming strong enough to meet discomfort or pain feels amazing, especially for someone that usually experiences the opposite of that.
I also have ADHD, which is explained in part as a developmental disability of executive control, but I find this approach to be extremely effective for regaining executive control, even to levels that people without ADHD lack. Basically, I suspect ADHD isn't a loss of executive control at all, but the executive control is being blocked by something like the feeling of pain or drug withdrawal, and that once you are okay with just having that bad feeling all of the time, you get your executive control back. I'm curious if GLP-1 drugs also help with ADHD? My prediction is that they would.
That may be the aspect of this line of thinking that’s not clear then: it doesn’t work for anyone. At least, in so far as the free will is illusory, it is a hallucination that such people have that they made such decisions, and stuck to them. It’s the demon hand syndrome, the person hallucinating a rationale for its motion.
Perhaps beforehand it was somehow "pre-determined" which of these attitudes and paths you would take, but that is completely irrelevant for the individual just living life, they have no way to know that one way or another, or any reason to actually care, as they still need to act exactly like they have free will and made the right choice to actually play out a future as the type of person pre-determined to have a desirable outcome.
It doesn't actually feel any easier or less painful to accomplish something difficult, even if free will is some sort of illusion when looked at from the outside perspective. You still experience, e.g. trying and failing over and over and never giving up until you succeed.
I can buy that, for example perhaps there is something outside our control that decides if you are capable of never giving up, but you still cannot know until you decide to never give up and try it- so it literally does not matter except as a philosophical curiosity.
I think a more interesting biological (and philosophical) question is why and how exactly do these GLP-1 drugs work, and why exactly are they so shockingly effective? Maybe they do somehow act on the brain to offer exactly the same psychological benefits as the stoic approach I am talking about, by the same or related underlying mechanism, and they're essentially interchangeable but work more often?
Can you define huge fraction and really commit? And cite evidence?
I disagree the basic idea of CBT or ACT is leaning into discomfort. In the senses articles suggest David Goggins and Wim Hof advise even less.
CBT and ACT work for many patients and don't work for many patients.
Some people liked intense exercise their whole lives. Some people hated it when they started but liked it eventually. Some people exercised daily since decades and hated every minute. Do you not believe the 1st and 3rd groups?
Pushing through bad feelings is a form of executive control. And ADHD impairments are not limited to impulse control. People who have ADHD who do not take medication have significantly higher rates of driving accidents than people who do not have ADHD or take ADHD medication. Proprioception, internal time perception, and working memory impairments are common.
I am somewhat baffled by your statement, as I feel it is largely self evident being familiar with, and having tried both therapy methods with professional therapists, and both Goggins and Hof's advice for years. I think a simple wikipedia level explanation of what those things actually are would suffice to answer your question, so I have nothing major to add, unless I am misunderstanding you. Goggins whole shtick in particular is just this one basic point, make yourself as mentally tough as possible by intentionally always doing whatever is difficult. Hof is also just literally getting into very cold water consistently, which is really not easy- and he has no real philosophy or theory, he just has you do it and see what happens.
Perhaps the therapy methods are less clear, but reframing things or deciding on clear values and purpose, are in my view, psychological tools to make the difficult endurable, or in some cases even enjoyable. This makes more sense if you're seeing the methods in the context of how the ancient stoics used the same techniques that inspired those therapies- especially Epictetus.
> Can you define huge fraction and really commit? And cite evidence?
Not really, it's just firsthand experience from doing them, and having widely sought out and read the experiences of others that did online.
You are effectively implying that firsthand experience and expertise are completely worthless, and people can only learn information from large scientific studies, which is nonsense- it would invalidate virtually everything humans know that allows them to effectively navigate the world. I'm a working academic scientist that often designs and executes large studies, and I only ever see these arguments and line of thinking from non-scientists that don't actually understand the limitations of scientific methods, but have turned it into some sort of pseudo-religion.
These are effectively yoga/meditation like techniques that are taught in communities I am part of, and that I have taught to friends and family. I'm not under some delusion that there isn't bias there, I have seen it not work for people, and account for that in my thinking about it. It's been life changing for me, and so I am happy to share info about it in case it might be for others, but I'm not under some delusion that it is the solution to everything.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that your comment isn't really about what I am actually saying, but a general anger towards anything that looks like "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps"- an anger you can see in other comments in this thread as well. This toxic line of thinking comes from an old fashioned moral argument, that basically derives ones moral standing and worth as a person from the state of being helpless and persecuted, which requires one to actively fight against anything that might be an effective tool to overcome adversity.
I don't agree that using techniques that can help people overcome adversity in any way diminishes the challenges people face, or diminishes things like systematic injustice and addiction that certainly can be due to factors outside of one's control, and hard or impossible to overcome.
Having tools and methods that can, even sometimes, empower people to overcome, survive, and thrive, even if they don't work every time doesn't invalidate those problems, it is just one way to fight them.
You claimed it worked for a huge fraction of
> I am doubting that it is a provable fact that it works for only a minuscule fraction of people
Nothing they wrote implied minuscule.
> You are effectively implying that firsthand experience and expertise are completely worthless
Individual experience is nearly worthless when making claims about populations. Individual experience and biased sampling do not make an expert.
> and people can only learn information from large scientific studies
Nothing they wrote implied this.
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that your comment isn't really about what I am actually saying, but a general anger towards anything that looks like "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps"
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.[1]
> an anger you can see in other comments in this thread as well.
We read different comments seemingly. Or you inferred anger where it was not evident.
> I don't agree that using techniques that can help people overcome adversity in any way diminishes the challenges people face, or diminishes things like systematic injustice and addiction that certainly can be due to factors outside of one's control, and hard or impossible to overcome.
This misrepresented what you said and what others said.
> Perhaps the therapy methods are less clear, but reframing things or deciding on clear values and purpose, are in my view, psychological tools to make the difficult endurable, or in some cases even enjoyable. This makes more sense if you're seeing the methods in the context of how the ancient stoics used the same techniques that inspired those therapies- especially Epictetus.
I am tempted to respond equally condescendingly. But I will not.
I am familiar with Stoicism, CBT, and ACT. You confirmed my impressions of David Goggins and Wim Hof. It seems likely you misunderstood what even less meant. The basic idea of CBT is to identify and correct cognitive distortions. Some patients some of the time will find some discomfort in this. Some patients some of the time find some discomfort in any therapy. This does not make leaning into discomfort the basic idea. Even less does it make the basic idea intentionally always doing whatever is difficult or make yourself as mentally tough as possible. Even less does it make the basic idea getting into very cold water consistently.
Reframing things or deciding on clear values and purpose are tools for many purposes. How you use them says more of your purposes than the tools.
Aaron Beck said Stoic philosophy was 1 of several roots of CBT. And he observed Stoicism's contribution could be found in other philosophies. Some modern Stoicism adherents ignore the other parts.
“Leaning into discomfort” for personal change may well work for much more than a miniscule fraction of people. It may be that such success is made more likely by some structural predisposition – an attenuated neuronal response to negative reinforcement, or some other precondition that allows its “carrier” to keep plugging to a successful outcome.
But clearly, there’s also a more than miniscule fraction of people for whom that doesn’t work. Their preconditions may deflect them from even trying that particular path, or cause them to give up along the way. I really don’t know, but that fraction seems at least as significant as the fraction for whom uncomfortable personal development paths lead to success.
Early in my career, I strongly believed in free will. I mean, I had it, right? And I didn’t regard my consciousness as all that different from my fellow hominids, so they’re probably all similarly endowed, right? Except...
Over time, research with small molecules like epinephrine and the psychedelics showed that perception/decisions/will could be profoundly influenced by neurochemistry. Ditto for various neuronal illnesses that are associated with profound personality changes.
I regard the GLP-1 results as a further demonstration that “free will”, whatever that is, is fundamentally mechanistic. There are few, maybe no, organismic drives stronger than hunger. A weekly injection of a GLP-1 agonist turns that drive way, way down in most of those who try it. This commonly exhibits itself in profound behavioral modification: if you were an inveterate snacker, suddenly you’re not interested in snacks. You pass them by in your pantry and at the grocery store. Your cognition around snacking changes, to the extent that not only aren’t you snacking, but you might find yourself setting a reminder that it’s time to have lunch. Given the strength of the hunger drive, that’s a very big deal, and revelatory about how we work.
I used to think I understood “free will”. Lately, I find it increasingly hard to define. I’m moving more in the direction of Robert Sapolsky as more research results come in. It feels to me a bit like the “God of the gaps” phenomenon, in which the space available for faith in the supernatural grows smaller with every scientific discovery.
It’s a remarkable time to be alive and have the luxury of considering these questions.
I think it's obvious that we don't have "free will" in that sense, it had never really occurred to me to consider otherwise- people are definitely quite driven by instincts, neurochemicals, etc. they they can't consciously choose.
However, I think my comment in the other thread still applies- that for an individual, it doesn't really matter one way or another- your firsthand experience is still going to be one of exercising your will to increase the odds of getting outcomes you want in life, or choosing not to, and definitely not getting them.
But there is some biological clue here about who we are, and how our brains work that is fascinating, when you consider the breadth of human health problems and challenges that these GLP-1 agonists influence. I can't wait to see what more is learned about this in the future.
After I started committing, really committing to consistently working out, a lot of other things fell into place more or less automatically. I stopped drinking, started eating very cleanly (I became ravenously hungry; junk food and sweets aren't appealing anymore), and stopped spending as much time on gaming. I know your broader point is about leaning into discomfort, but specifically leaning into exercise seems to bring extra benefits. Exercise is medicine, as they say.
As so many boxers (and many athletes for that matter) he was addicted to drugs and alcohol for many years. Probably sexual abuse he suffered as a kid had something to do with it. He was able to quit, but I think cold shower and a run in the morning was not quite enough to do it.
Nobody just starts abusing their body with chemicals. It is not difficult to quit, you can stay off your Jones for months, but if you do nothing to the demons that made you enter the 36th chamber in the first place, you are going to slip sooner or later. It takes more than a splash of cold water on the face.
Marcus Aurelius was literally a god and the emperor of the world. He prob had little bit more resources to help gim other than stoism. Similarly if you have loving family and friends, a good therapist and some sort of medication,you canmaybe wim the fight with the devil that gets you to use. Training and getting used to being uncomfortable surely helps, but you won’t kick anything for long only with them.
Therefore these drugs won’t be a solution either. Are you going to use them rest of your life? Whatever it is that makes you want to drink, smoke, shoot, gamble or whatever is still going to be there. Bit used together with therapy and loving environment might help. Of course, most addicts have no access to any of these resources.
CBT and ACT are modern therapy methods based on stoic methods, very widely used, and very effective for regular people that aren't emperors.
I do think you need tremendous mental effort, or grit, even to fight serious addiction. But it is only a start.
It works for a subset of the population that doesn’t question stuff too much and is more or less ok with gaslighting themselves. There is evidence that it loses effectiveness the higher up the IQ scale you go.
The vast majority of mental health issues are a “not treating the root causes” problem. People stuck in a life they despise for various reasons and have no realistic way of changing those root causes. This ranges everywhere from the single mom with 3 kids and an eviction notice all the way to the high powered corporate executive stuck in an empty do-nothing career path.
Not everyone is wired the same but we’ve created a society that you must conform to extremely rigid norms or be at risk of destitution.
Addiction is also common(ism) amongst those who suffer from NDP. In this case, is it truly addiction, or simply another tool in their NPD cache of weapons.
I don’t disagree with you. But it’s also important to be aware of some of the nuances and finer points. I also recommend reading “The Courage to be Disliked”. Not that it / Adler speak to addiction but it’s a thought provoking alternative to the Freudian paradigm.
Don't fall into 'I can do it, therefore everyone should be able to do it' trap.
Life is more complicated than that. We all know that.
If it's an inherent quality, then there's no reason we should have any less of it than "the greatest generation", or whoever we should want to idolize. The difference has to be external, not internal.
Let's work on what we can change, the external. What you are might change, but you can't change it - that's the core realization behind both European pagan obsession with fate, and Christian obsession with sin.