gwern comments on Anti-Akrasia Technique: Structured Procrastination - Less Wrong

51 Post author: patrissimo 12 November 2009 07:35PM

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Comment author: alexflint 23 November 2009 12:09:41PM 1 point [-]

I think it is possible that pushing oneself close to the limit of one's willpower reserves could cause increase overall reserves in the future.

Consider the case of over-eating, in which pushing oneself close to the limit of stomach capacity causes the stomach to stretch and hence increase in capacity for the future.

That's not to say it actually does, just that it could.

More importantly, though, the "willpower reserve" is a fairly coarse model, not a detailed map of actual brain functioning (though if anyone knows of detailed empirical investigation of this phenomenon then I'd be very interested). I don't think it's productive to probe in such detail -- it's like trying to discern houses from a low-resolution map of the entire Earth.

Comment author: gwern 28 November 2009 05:26:01PM *  5 points [-]

"As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or 2 something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin."

--William James, The Principles of Psychology 1890, Chapter IV

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