Continuing the discussion from Post-Contact Hilarity:
I was reminded of this again on reading one particular Less Wrong post, namely Pain is not the unit of Effort:
I quote:
I often hear on the internet laments like “Why is nobody actually trying?” Once upon a time, I was honestly and genuinely confused by this question. It seemed to me that “actually trying” - aiming the full force of your being at the solution of a problem you care about - is self-evidently motivating and requires zero extra justification if you care about the problem.
I think I finally understand why so few people are “actually trying.” The reason is this pervasive and damaging belief that pain is the unit of effort. With this belief, the injunction “actually try” means “put yourself in as much pain as you can handle.” Similarly, “she’s trying her best” translates to “she’s really hurting right now.” Even worse, people with this belief optimize for the appearance of suffering. Answering emails at midnight and appearing fatigued at meetings are somehow taken to be more credible signals of effort than actual results. And if you think that’s pathological, wait until you meet someone for whom telling them about opportunities actively hurts them, because you’ve just created another knife they feel pressured to cut themselves with.
I see a mob of people walking up to houses and throwing themselves bodily at the closed front doors. I walk up to block one man and ask, “Stop it! Why don’t you try the doorknob first? Have you rung the doorbell?” The man responds in tears, nursing his bloody right shoulder, “I’m trying as hard as I can!” With his one good arm, he shoves me aside and takes a running start to lunge at the door again. Finally, the timber shatters and the man breaks through. The surrounding mob cheers him on, “Look how hard he’s trying!”
Once you understand that pain is how people define effort, the answer to the question “why is nobody actually trying?” becomes astoundingly obvious.
This is the sort of thing that both seems awfully obvious there, and irritates an awful lot of people who can’t understand why a culture so obviously lazy persists in turning up at the front of the race.
