slatestarscratchpad:

A question for people who do good things that most people would consider exceptional or difficult, such as be vegan for moral reasons, or donate unusually high percent of their money to charity - is this hard for you? Like, do you have to constantly struggle with willpower issues and say “I know this isn’t what I want to do, but I’ll tough it out to make the world a better place”? Or does it just seem like the obvious action and proceed fluidly from your beliefs and values?

Switched over cleanly and immediately; in 3rd or 4th grade I saw some sitcom with a stereotypical Jewish mother guilt-tripping her son, realized that was a vulnerability, never assigned value to my parents’ wills qua my parents’ wills from there on

A year earlier I’d done the same with sunk costs and blunt trauma