it might have taken a long time and a lot of conscious intervention for me to identify and stop eating junk food (or what I consider such), but it certainly no longer takes any conscious thought to reject a piece of candy. I don't think through everything bad it could do to me or anything and weigh that against how good it would taste; I simply feel a few painful bodily sensations and think, "Ew! Can't have that!"
When I began cooking and grocery shopping on my own, I've thought things through and decided that it would probably be better to mostly eat fresh vegetables, beans and, rarely, some meat. I kept at it for maybe two years, but then I moved in with different people and since I didn't have any strong reasons to stay with my old diet I began eating more junk food and sweets. I don't feel or observe any effects, ill or otherwise.
I guess I didn't make the relevant dietary knowledge truly part of myself. It might bite me back later, but right now I don't have ugh-reaction to hamburgers or candy, althrough I do have a mental model of subjective yumminess as a manifestation of adaptation-execution, and I understand that this is far from being fitness-maximizing behavior in today's environment.
Can you think of a simple way to check the territory and discover how broken and unreliable our maps have grown?
I was reading the NY Times article on Decision Fatigue, when I came upon a hypothesis I would like everyone's feedback on.
I take as a premise that there seems to be a high prevalence of akrasia in the lesswrong community.
I also take as a premise that the sequences give us a more-than-usual detailed model of the world, one that presents us with more possible trade-offs we could be making in every day life.
So the conjecture that by trying to reduce bias and perform a lot of cognitive calculation, we effectively spend large parts of our days in a decision fatigued state, leading to akrasia problems.
Does this sound (un)reasonable? Why? How would you go about turning this into a testable proposition?
UPDATE: Anna Salamon has put up a detailed poll here that may shed some light on the situation. Please take some time to fill it in.