gwern comments on When Willpower Attacks - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (77)
One could also imagine an individual who aspires, through sheer dint of willpower, to become homo economicus. Whenever he senses the beginnings of a bout of empathy, guilt, shame, or love, he exercises top-down cognitive control to extinguish his emotional reactions and stay on course to maximizing his utility. It won't be long before his social life becomes impoverished. Akrasia in his case would be quite adaptive.
Ah, but you forgot that this particular homo economicus has a utility function valuing only reproductive fitness. By suppressing emotions like empathy, guilt, shame, love, and ordinary creature comforts, he is able to make a fortune and pay/bribe sperm banks in countless countries to use exclusively his own sperm; by the time he dies heavily in debt (a poor decision by his creditors), his sperm has been used in tens of thousands of inseminations, almost all of which come to fruition, and he is officially the Most Reproductively Fit Man in the World. Akrasia in his case would be quite maladaptive.