Talk:Gumption trap

Merge
This article really should be merged into either the book article or the author article or both. The following are reasons:
 * 1) The term really doesn't exist outside of Pirsig's work.
 * 2) It's a very short article.
 * 3) It's unlikely that the article will be expanded.

&#8212;M (talk • contribs) 00:04, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

keep
The reasoning is valid but I would counter


 * 1) I came to this article via an external link
 * 2) the term was very appropriate and I see it gaining traction on the web
 * 3) the term is universal anad useful on it's own outside of the book
 * 4) the user above who made the suggestion has been banned from wikipedia (?)

So I removed the merge suggestion in the article, which detracts from the article itself

Billspat (talk) 15:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikibook
I put up a wikibook that could hold more content on gumption traps, if contributors here are in the mood to write something less encyclopedic and more instructional.

--Joel (talk) 06:18, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Feedback loop
I believe the use of the term "Negative Feedback Loop" to describe the action of the Gumption Trap to be completely wrong. I think the misuse stems from the mistaken association with the word negative.... The feedback loop in operation is actually positive feedback. Negative feedback acts to negate the process causing the change and the net result is stability - not a trap! However, positive feedback acts in such a way as to reinforce the process at work and causes the process to move ever more quickly in that direction. If the initial movement was in a negative (downward or initiative lacking) direction then the action of positive feedback will be to accelerate the decline into the gumption trap.

So to sum up: The words positive and negative when used in relation to feedback have nothing to do with whether the outcome is positive or negative. Positive feedback caused an escalation of a trend (this can be either upward or downward) whereas negative feedback will restore stability to a system if it is disturbed in either direction.

I wish you all well, Steve.

Learned Helplessness?
There is a remark on the page equating the gumption trap to the concept of learned helplessness. These appear to me to be two very different things. Pirsig's gumption traps are (as stated in the article) situations that can temporarily drain a person's enthusiasm for a task. Learned helplessness is the much more permanent phenomenon where a person or animal learns to endure negative stimuli without acting on them, to their own detriment. There is no common ground here.