Jonathan_Graehl comments on Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality - Less Wrong

105 Post author: patrissimo 14 September 2010 04:17PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (251)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 12 October 2010 09:40:26PM *  0 points [-]

I finally got around to reading this. You're right, there is some evidence that willpower-poor individuals can be easily trained to do better (assuming they can actually implement for a long period of time some habit which involves self-regulation). Amusingly, there's also evidence that consuming more glucose also helps ward off ego depletion.

My detailed response is here: http://graehl.posterous.com/evidence-that-self-control-can-be-trained-lik

Comment author: Unnamed 13 October 2010 05:05:00AM 1 point [-]

The argument has been made that blood glucose essentially is the resource that gets depleted when you're low on willpower. Using willpower is an energy-intensive brain activity, so it's hard to do when your blood sugar is low. Some of the studies that have shown this have given people a sugary drink to restore their willpower, but that's probably not the way to go in real life since it'll cause a temporary spike in blood sugar followed by a crash. But it's possible that fixing your diet to avoid low blood sugar could improve your willpower.

There have also been several studies looking at immediate interventions that can counteract the drained battery effect. In other words, people come into the lab, they do one task that drains their willpower, then they get some intervention that might restore their willpower, then they do another task that requires willpower. This review by Baumeister, Vohs, and Tice (pdf) lists a few that have worked and gives citations:

  • Humor and laughter
  • Other positive emotions
  • Cash incentives
  • Implementation intentions (‘‘if ... then’’ plans)
  • Social goals (e.g., wanting to help people; wanting to be a good relationship partner)
Comment author: gwern 12 October 2010 10:41:51PM 0 points [-]

Any chance you could remove all the newlines in the quotes? They're pretty unreadable

with random

newlines.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 12 October 2010 11:16:08PM 0 points [-]

sure. paste from pdf artifact.