1. I am a scientist. This sure doesn't seem like science to me.
Reasons to buy the book:
1. I am too ignorant to be pessimistic.
2. The source of the suggestion. Ryan's judgement usually seems pretty sound.
Two reasons are better than one. Just bought the book.
I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday. I'll start on Monday.
You only need scientific method to organize observations. There are no observations here. There's nothing scientific about 'discipline', but it's still useful.
Not being scientific doesn't mean it doesn't work. Plenty of tools and techniques have been invented and developed without science that turn out to be effective when subjected to scientific analysis (example: many plants used for medicinal purposes). It seems to me, though, that many more turn out to be hogwash (examples: many plants used for medicinal purposes, blood-letting, homeopathy, prayer-as-treatment).
In short, P(tool developed w/ science is effective) > P(tool developed w/o science is effective), and I don't know of a methodology more effective than science for determining the effectiveness of a tool or technique.
Agreed, but there was no claim to science, at least from the description.
To me the original article seemed to air an opinion. Asking 'where's the science?' is akin to asking for proof, which makes no sense when we're discussing opinions.
To me, "it's unproven" is just unfavorable opinion without articulating reasons. So I don't think it should get a vote in edw's comment :)
(upvoted you, btw. You were at -1. Downvoting such a high-quality comment is a classic example of voting by agreement. I think I'm going to start a site highlighting the stupidest votes on HN everyday..)
Thanks. This isn't the first time I've made a thoughtful reply to a "science isn't important" comment. The last time, my comment didn't get as many upvotes as its parent, so I'm not too surprised that my comment wasn't received well this time, either.
To you, "it's unproven" is not a valid reason for rejecting this book. But it is a valid reason for many other people, especially since it takes a great deal of commitment to use this (unproven) tool.
Full disclosure, I just bought the book :) Would still really like to see it proven effective by science, but am not putting the burden of proof on anyone in particular (original author is dead) nor holding my breath.
Absolutely. Proven or disproven, or more likely a more nuanced picture will emerge of when repetition works.
I think of science as this wavefront that lags the frontiers of what we work on. But it'll get here eventually.
I don't know of scientific studies showing the effectiveness of repeated affirmations (though I'd suspect there are some). They still seem like a very plausible tool.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. By that token, there are some claims so ordinary that they only require the ordinary evidence of experience.
Edit: go ahead and make decisions based on whatever criteria you feel is appropriate. Nobody has the time to read peer-reviewed journals on everything, and at some point you have to rely on the recommendations of your friends or people with the relevant expertise. You may feel that these techniques are equivalent to a spade or broom or hammer, but others may feel it's a large time commitment they would not otherwise make, or be too close to the realm of psychology/medicine, and require more than just "Works for me!" before trying it themselves.
As I said before, the lack of science didn't stop me either.
There are more questions in the world than science can ever hope to address, and sometimes you have to make a decision with limited information.
Edit: oh, and I said pretty much the same thing as you just did in another of my replies[1]. Maybe I didn't put enough disclaimers in my original post?
There's no scientific justification to its methodology. So we don't know that repeating particular phrases over and over can change one's mind or behavior in a meaningful way.
We're hackers here. There is no magic behind the scenes.
Having started to meditate in the Vipassana style has started to teach me to accept, but not embrace these emotions. In a less hippy-dippy way, there could be actualization training that helps people get on the right path first, defeating these types of emotions.
I posit that it's something that will make you think it worked (and you'll recommend the book to all your friends), but won't make any actual positive impact on your discipline. Basically if it's a placebo, it would give you self-delusion instead of results.
The upshot is that discipline is self-evident. Anything that has an effect on discipline is indistinguishable from placebo. Either you're getting more done or you aren't, there's not a lot of room for "getting stuff done, but in a fake way."
I'm not an expert in self-motivation so I don't know if there are placebo controlled randomized experiments to test effectiveness of self-motivation, but it seems like a reasonable and testable hypothesis that there are some real cognitive effects.
We know that athletes exhibit "muscle memory" where after prolonged repetition of a physical motion there are real changes that occur in the brain to make future repetitions sub-conscious, i.e. "being in the zone".
I suppose there could be an analagous system for higher order cognitive processes.
Now, from my point of view the idea that something like this could work is quite plausible. Repeat something to yourself often enough and you'll start to believe it? Sure, that sounds like the kind of thing that the human brain is just dumb enough to fall for.
Personally I wouldn't do it in this precise form. Repeat that passage to yourself and you'll feel silly. For starters, it's written in pseudo-archaic English words which the author doesn't actually understand. "I will be liken to"? That isn't even a sensible grammatical construction.
There is a good book chapter from Bas Verplanke called "Habits and implementation intentions". A pdf of the chapter can be downloaded from http://uit.no/getfile.php?PageId=1935&FileId=312 The chapter focuses on habits and then how implementation intentions can be used to change them.
The part I'm not sure about is that additional level of abstraction. In my experience, if you read about programming a lot, you may get marginally better at programming, but nowhere near as good as you would've gotten had you spent that time programming. Similarly, if you read about persisting a lot, I doubt you'll get as good as you would if, every time you thought about quitting, you told yourself 'no' and kept going.
For instance, it is afaik hard to become a good chess player without reading a bit about opening theory and reading about old matches. It is hard to become good at graphics programming without some math. And so on.
I can see how a book of repetitive phrases would tap into the same process that causes us to be influenced by friends and other people we respect. The book is really just a way of a message being communicated back to us. You could probably think of it as a hack to get positive ideas burnt into your subconcious on a large scale. And also, it's obviously important that you respect the book (and by extension, the author). Friendships work when you let the friends have influence over your life because you value their opinion.
I read a lot of these types of books, and I've been questioned why. I figure I'm just going to spend the time either reading fiction books or watching TV, anyway, so why not?
Maybe. But people sure buy a lot of different self-help books that claim to be THE WAY.
On the science question, I'd be interested to read more about the science of motivation. It seems intuitive that reading the same thing over and over would tend to reinforce it in your mind. Isn't that the basis for propaganda and brainwashing in general? However, intuition and science are often orthogonal, so some hard data would be interesting.
Sounds like a very difficult nut to crack.
I think the problem with akrasia is it's a lot like "being sick" - if you call your physician on the phone and say, "I'm sick" he won't be able to really help you without further diagnosis.
Seems like akrasia could be any one of a couple dozen things (fear of failure, fear of success, habit, chemical addiction, many more things). We're not at a point in anti-akrasia/rationality/motivation/etc to be able to accurately diagnose and treat all of the causes of it.
I think we'll get there, though. Someday. Quite a ways off. But progress is being made. In the meantime, I'll second Ryan's recommendation for the book. It's good.
For example, we are the most prosperous civilization in history, yet we have record rates of suicide and unhappiness compared to more "backward" civilizations. In fact, the 20th century has been the most horrific in the history of the world, yet it was also the most advanced.
If akrasia is something we can "fix," why haven't we fixed it by now? Surely not for lack of trying.
I see Buddhists and meditators fix their problem of "I want to do something but can't make myself do it" by erasing the "want" part, I see disciplinarians and organisers strengthening their ability to make themselves do things and meditators and organisers reduce the obstacles in their way of doing things.
How many people do you know who have one or two self help books which they read (or partly read) but didn't really act on? Does that count as trying?
How many schools and colleges and night schools do you know which have courses in "curing yourself of procrastination"? Any?
It still seems very much stuck in the past, like natural philosophers talking about phlogiston. Some self help techniques work, but finding which you click with and doing them right and keeping trying until you get results and avoiding the dross and doing so while not being affected by whatever problems you have that you want to change isn't a simple thing and people generally don't seem to "try hard" at it (in the right ways).
From a behavioral and cognitive view of psychology, gaining motivation from passages in the book is comparable to observed learning. If the motivation one gains from reading the book results in positive results then according to contingency conditioning theory it should result in reinforcement of the behavior, thereby producing an upward spiral. The book probably also influences humans' by altering their beliefs and therefore perceptions during top-down processing of information.
From a biomedical view of psychology, reading a passage 1000 times probably alters your brain structure in significant enough ways that it alters your motivational attitudes. I think that if you put people who read the book in an fMRI scanner you'll see some difference compared to control people.
maybe it's nietzsche or one of the romanticists you should start with then