Comment by nonameiguess
2 days ago
Interesting to effectively see Jean Paul Sartre being brought up here. As verbose as he was, though, I do agree with the framing. Putting aside the fundamental physical paradoxes and incoherence of free will, at the level of subjective experience, every action ever taken is a choice, possibly between extremely shitty options, but a choice nonetheless, and owning that is the only way I've ever found to stay sane about life.
That said, I'm not sure about the novelty thing. I'd rate the greatest long term project in my life as being staying fit, athletic, and healthy as I near 50, in spite of some horrible injuries and setbacks, and remaining thus far in a reasonably happy marriage. In both of those pursuits, novelty is almost the anthesis to success. People program hop and never improve, and substitute one-night stands and serial cheating for any form of lifelong relationship. To me, it is just habit-formation and basic discipline, trying to always remind myself what truly matters. Heck, it's probably even fear as much as anything else. I know I'm going to be hurting terribly in my 60s and 70s if I'm alone and unhealthy, regardless of what else I may have achieved, and if I wait until then to try and cram lifetime pursuits into a single decade, it'll be a lot harder than simply starting in my 20s, doing a little bit every week, and sticking with it in spite of how much of a grind it might be at times, because I know how much it will mean to future me and I have to make the choice that future me matters just as much as present me.
In contrast, I'm not convinced that consistently uploading a lot of videos to YouTube is all that important, but of course this guy is free to have his own priorities.
> That said, I'm not sure about the novelty thing. I'd rate the greatest long term project in my life as being staying fit, athletic, and healthy as I near 50, in spite of some horrible injuries and setbacks, and remaining thus far in a reasonably happy marriage. In both of those pursuits, novelty is almost the anthesis to success.
You're right that long-term goals such as these don't thrive on novelty at all. I suppose they fall in a different category, more of a commitment than a one-off project to be procrastinated about.
For me personally, I have similar goals, and I'm not struggling with procrastinating my fitness-related tasks at all. It's an interesting insight, now that I think about it. Would that be because I have a long-term goal in mind? Because I know it's important to my health?
> the fundamental physical paradoxes and incoherence of free will
Are those even true? They sure are in classical, Newtonian physics, but are they in modern, e.g. quantum physics? Not saying that one proves free will, but is there an actual hard impossibility?
In my high school philosophy class, the teacher lamented that we replaced the deterministic Newtonian "billiards" model of the universe for the Quantum "incomprehensible randomness" model of the universe, which is somehow even less satisfying as far as free will goes.
Buddhism arrives at no free will from a different angle: the universe is interdependent, there's no "self" to be found in consciousness, etc.
Amusingly, my meditation textbook starts with the advice to form a clear, strong intention to meditate every day.[0]
That sounds like optimal use of the supposedly nonexistent free will to me!
[0] The Mind Illuminated, by Culadasa. Relevant excerpt reproduced here: https://nekolucifer.substack.com/p/first-form-a-clear-intent...