RichardKennaway comments on Reference Points - Less Wrong

32 Post author: lionhearted 17 November 2010 08:09AM

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Tags: akrasia decisiontheory decisions procrastination nutrition instrumental rationality

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 17 November 2010 11:49:42AM 1 point [-]

Eliezer writes in the theory of fun that to sell an idea to someone, you usually don't need to convince them it's a good thing to live with for their whole life. You only need to convince them that the first hour or day after they choose is going to be good.

I think that's a rational response, by the person you're trying to convince. The more distant the promised reward of whatever someone is touting to me, the more it will cost to reach it, and the more convinced I would have to be before taking it seriously enough to even begin. Or to put that the other way round, show me something that I can do right now and experience evidence that it works, and the bar for you to sell it to me is much lower.

"Jam tomorrow" is the promise of crooks and charlatans.

Comment author: xamdam 17 November 2010 05:21:10PM 2 points [-]

I think that's a rational response

In the timespan under discussion

first hour or day

you just justified crack usage

Comment author: magfrump 17 November 2010 06:05:54PM 1 point [-]

That was, I believe, implicit in the original post. The reason that it's scary is that it doesn't just apply to scratching a rash, it also applies to doing hard drugs.

Reference points, as used by default, make it very easy to throw your life away. That's what makes it scary.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 17 November 2010 05:23:19PM *  1 point [-]

"Jam now" is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

first hour or day

If I decide to, say, learn Spanish, then I expect every hour spent on the task, including the first one, to pay a perceptible return.

Comment author: xamdam 17 November 2010 05:37:30PM 1 point [-]

I accept this as a valid point - first hour/day is an important heuristic indicator of goodness, but Eli wrote

You only need to convince them that the first hour or day

Comment author: orthonormal 22 November 2010 01:58:18AM 0 points [-]

"Jam tomorrow" is the promise of crooks and charlatans.

Or at least, that's how it invariably worked in pre-legal societies. No wonder we're mistrustful of delayed payoffs.

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