= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Dentin comments on Poll results: LW probably doesn't cause akrasia - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (104)
Upvoted. This seems like an incredibly insightful observation, which has not been addressed much in the procrastination or self-discipline literature much, if at all.
This observation certainly would explain why "writer's block" is a thing. ;-)
More formally, such a correlation predicts that writer's block would 1) exist, and 2) be worse for some sorts of writing than others. It would also predict difficulties achieving such outcomes such as losing weight or developing some degree of fitness, where the causal links between inputs and outcomes are tenuous or unclear.
ISTM that one way to harness this observation would be to shift one's goals to refer to things that are fully under one's control. This is already part of standard self-help advice, but it's usually justified on the grounds that it's discouraging to work as hard as you can but still not get your desired outcome.
"shift one's goals to refer to things that are fully under one's control."
Almost impossible, we're too causally entangled with uncertainties for most of our goals. The obvious method is to hold oneself blameless for the parts not under control but the brain seems to have a hard time with this, stressing yourself out wondering if there was anything else you could have done. This combined with hindsight bias makes people feel awful because they could have had their goal "if only they had done X" ignoring that there was no plausible way for them to have known that beforehand. I think this behavior is adaptive as it seems like part of our learning algorithm. In particular the feeling awful is a motivator to think about what information you should seek out in future similar situations that you didn't this time. That this adaptation continues to execute even when there actually is no way to get the information is another cognitive cost shortcut bug.
Thanks. This little observation makes a lot of sense, and explains aspects of my behaviour that I really didn't have a good explanation for. In particular, I've been trying to grow a small business for a couple of years now, and akrasia has been very difficult to fight at times. The correlation between effort and reward is virtually non-existent except over a multi-month period, and the constant second guessing can easily lead to paralysis.
Did I take the most optimal approach? Should I have done something different? I feel bad about it, but there just isn't any way to obtain the necessary data in a timely fashion. This shouldn't cause akrasia, but it does.