No, I'm saying that, to a very significant degree, our behavior is driven by physiological processes inside of our brains, and overcoming these can be extremely difficult. If people could just choose not to eat then they wouldn't be obese to begin with.

You would know if you ever experienced depression, ADHD, or any other disorder takes away your executive function. I take it you don't consider these to be real disorders?

> Urges of all kinds (never wanted to slap someone and didn’t?) can be overcome with an only a little discipline.

Re: Discipline: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45702667

Oh no I think they’re real, but I also I think the proportion of people who genuinely have no control over these parameters is vanishingly small.

In all things, generalisation is probably too blunt, but removing the agency from everyone, turning them into victims of their own brain chemistry and advancing the narrative that they can’t possibly change their situation does them far more harm than good.

Even depression, there are things which you can do to overcome it. I’m not saying it’s easy, but you seem to be arguing it’s impossible.

Stop painting everything so black & white. I am not arguing that it's impossible, nor that people have "no control" over anything. I am arguing that it's difficult and that it's ignorant and harmful to paint their problems as just "lack of discipline".

The problem is that dualists (like the person I originally responded to) assume that willpower is separate from physiology, therefore what's easy for them should be easy for others, and therefore if others can't achieve the same things they are achieving then they must be lazy, lack discipline, and don't deserve additional help or compassion.

These sorts of ignorant beliefs then shape policy and make it harder for people to get help to deal with their problems, perpetuating the cycle, for example the rather famous failure of "the war on drugs". That's the only thing I'm arguing - that people need to accept that addiction is a complex and individual health problem and to start treating it as such, it's the only way we're going to move forward.

Of course it’s difficult. Do you think having drive enough to overcome an addiction, or fight to change your situation is simply “easy” if you have discipline? What kind of argument is that? You need discipline precisely because things are difficult, I don’t really see where we disagree on this.

You continue to assume that discipline is something you innately have or don't have as part of your character/soul/whatever you want to call it, independent of your body and brain chemistry, that's where we disagree.

The way people judge "effort" and "difficulty" is broken, that's part of the problem. Whether you have or lack discipline is judged by the outcome, not by the effort that person made because the effort is invisible to the outside world.

Person A quits smoking (with 1 unit of effort), therefore they have "discipline"

Person B fails to quit smoking (with 10 units of effort), therefore they're judged to "lack discipline".

No, Ive never said that discipline is a quality some innately have, and its not what I think.

The problem is with your attempt to grade difficulty here. I dont think, outside of some outliers that are statically insignificant (e.g someone who can kick heroin with no problems or whatever) that the difficulty of getting in shape or quitting smoking is higher for some people than others. It's really difficult for everyone.

I think discipline is probably the wrong term, I guess drive may come closer, but whatever you want to call it, it's a function of your will to change and its a stronger force than any addiction -- clearly, or no one would ever beat any addictions.

This idea of grading and judging people on their 'difficult units' is nonsense, and pushing that as an excuse for people to be helpless is a really harmful narrative to put out there.

> Urges of all kinds (never wanted to slap someone and didn’t?) can be overcome with an only a little discipline.

Okay, but where do you think that discipline comes from? Is it an inherent quality that a person is born with? I’d argue that it’s not, and it’s something that needs to be learned and exercised. Many people didn’t get the opportunity to learn it (yet?), and I don’t believe it makes them somehow inferior.

I don’t think it’s in inherent quality either. Why do some people decide to put the cake down and hit the weights and others don’t? I don’t know, all i’m saying is the option existed for both and in the end it’s a choice.