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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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It's just standard internal vs external Locus of Control.

It doesn't matter what your politics or background is. An external locus of control is poisonous and will result in worse outcomes over your lifetime.

This concept gets obfuscated with people trolling 'just pull yourself up by your bootstraps' when there are clearly external factors preventing success. Even in those cases when the deck is stacked against you, you are better off doing what you can with what you have rather than just giving up and succumbing to Learned Helplessness.

It doesn't matter what your politics or background is. An external locus of control is poisonous and will result in worse outcomes over your lifetime.

An internal locus of control, when the reality is that "external forces (beyond their influence), have control over the outcome of events in their lives", is literally insane. As @Belisarius points out, "There is no reason to treat the same all complaints as some might be valid, and others invalid."

"I suffer this discrimination because people like me are unwilling to exert political influence in sufficient number to stop it."

Is this internal or external locus of control?

External.

So what's the internal way of saying this?

"I suffer this discrimination because I cannot rally enough political support from people like me to stop it."?

"I suffer this discrimination because I can't muster an army capable of conquering the United States."?

"I suffer this discrimination because I won't strap a bomb to my chest a blow up some government functionaries."?

Yes, especially the first two. Having an internal locus of control means you accept that anything bad that happens to you is entirely your fault.

I'm not sure I find "fault" in any of them

What if I engage in a form of magical thinking where every choice I make steers the universe into a timeline where people like me are more likely to make the same choice?

Internal, but acausal decision theory is nuts.

So is holding a hot iron as your hand sizzles and boils.

External forces there may be, but you need a certain mindset to move from under them.

An internal locus of control gives you better outcomes, regardless of how valid a particular complaint is. Even if it is insanity, it's a useful insanity.

I have no idea if the particular woman in the example above actually faced unfairness or not (she probably has; at some point we all have). But I do know she'd be in a better position, financially and psychologically, if she spent less time introspecting about how mean and terrible and unjust the world is to her and more time embracing her agency.

I can't speak for others. But in my experience, blaming myself for my problems makes me very depressed.

-> And that’s your fault and you need to overcome it because no one else can do that for you.

Just gotta take it one level deeper.

Of course, there’s depression and then there’s depression, and seeking necessary external help is part of taking responsibly.

(I have not fully embraced radical self-ownership, but I think there’s a lot of merit to it.)

Seeking external help is not having an internal locus of control. And I agree that my depression is my own fault, and evidence that I am a bad person.

What no.

Blaming external forces or only relying on external assistance is a lack of an internal locus of control. That can lead to learned helplessness.

Accurately perceiving one needs external support for something and seeking it is being agentic. Not seeking external help when it is needed is an unhelpful avoidance pattern and rarely leads to good outcomes.

Well, we've come around from 'seeking external help is always bad' to 'sometimes seeking external help is good and sometimes it's not'. I guess I can't argue with that.

I think you don’t understand what the posters above meant by “internal locus of control” and you are not distinguishing blaming external factors vs. seeking external assistance.

“The whole world is against me.”

Vs.

“I need help to overcome a challenge.”

More comments

An internal locus of control gives you better outcomes, regardless of how valid a particular complaint is. Even if it is insanity, it's a useful insanity.

How positive can we be about the correlation/causation here? For reasons described elsewhere in this thread, people who succeed attribute it to their own agency, while people who fail blame circumstances. The cross-sectional cohort studies I see with a quick search don't impress me with their rigor in dismissing that explanation of LoC/outcome correlations. They seem to assume that if a 4th grader has internal LoC and experiences better outcomes later, then internal LoC was the cause; as opposed to that 4th grader having developed an internal LoC by age 10 due to having more friends, a likeable personality, having demonstrated demonstrated competency in the past, etc. The studies might include a line about controlling for IQ, but that's about it.

I dislike psychology as a field and this always sounded like one of those "just so" stories, to my biased ears.

EDIT: Scott wrote a lot about a related topic, the growth mindset, and my views against it are probably more eloquently argued by him.

Or trying to change things, or getting out. Or just resigning yourself to suffering.

I think you’re mostly right but ‘not playing rigged games’ is also in your locus of control.

I think you’re mostly right but ‘not playing rigged games’ is also in your locus of control.

Sometimes. But often enough you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.

Agreed. If you have identified the rigged game and made a conscious choice to not play, accepting the consequences of doing so.

The identifying the choice and making it is the important thing. Not allowing the choice to be made for you or deluding yourself that there is no choice to be made. The price may be high, but it is still a price that can be paid.

It reminds me of 'The Box Trap' in Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (Pg 108. Warning libertarian text - Please don't call the Firemen on me).

I suppose you aren’t ‘Dedicated Pessimist’ for nothing :)

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