# Moral Mechanism

Originally published: 2012-08-19
Canonical URL: /2012/Aug/moral-mechanism/

It feels immoral to even think of using _techniques_ to motivate oneself; one should instead just use one's _free will_ to _choose_ the correct action. How utterly _degrading_ it would be, how insulting to the very notion of human dignity, to stoop to the level of contemplating one's own psychology using mere cause-and-effect reasoning, as if one were some sort of animal, or a machine!

But this moralizing is itself immoral, because it doesn't work. If I'm not smart enough to do the right thing for the right reasons, then I might at least aspire to do the right thing for the wrong reasons for the right reasons.