Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by perdunov 4151 days ago
This is probably the normal animal/human reaction: to react only when something is hurting you right now. If you take the pain away, the motivation vapors.

This is one of the design flaws of the human mind inherited from animals that causes procrastination and lack of willpower.

3 comments

> to react only when something is hurting you right now. If you take the pain away, the motivation vapors.

I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer believes he's going to die after eating the poisonous part of fugu. He changes his habits to embrace the remaining part of his life. After it's miraculously revealed that he'll survive, he professes to continue with the ideal of seizing life. This was an instructional scare to never take your life or those around you for granted. Yet, the final shot of the episode is him sitting on the couch watching TV like a drone.

From a personal perspective, I find being athiest really makes me prioritise things. This is it. Today is today. I washed my hands and murdered lots of little bugs n stuff. That may be me one day. See a near car crash, think about what to do to make today significant.

Not sure what point I was trying to make really. Some days being a TV drone is OK, some days I'm tired. I don't want to spend every day tired, so I chill out today to make tomorow more epic.

Hm.

> procrastination and lack of willpower.

Well, it's one way to look at it. The other is to consider that the human mind is extremely adaptive and optimize the energy cost given the context.

Do you think nothing long lasting can be taken away from such `experience`?

How could that `experience` be redesigned to have longer lasting effects ?