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Esar comments on Morality open thread - Less Wrong
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I have a question: what is akrasia exactly?
Say I have to finish a paper, but I also enjoy wasting time on the internet. All things considered, I decide it would be better for me to finish the paper than for me to waste time on the internet. And yet I waste time on the internet. What's going on there? It can't just be a reflex or a tick: my reflexes aren't that sophisticated. Given how complicated wasting time on the internet is, and that I decidedly enjoy it, it looks like an intentional action, something which is the result of my reasoning. Yet I reasoned that I shouldn't go on the internet, so it can't really be an intentional action. My intention was exactly not to go on the internet.
Maybe I'm just being hypocritical, and I actually value the internet more than finishing a paper?
Don't sell your reflexes short. Our brains were executing complicated plans for millions of generations before acquiring explicit reasoning, i.e. language. Lately I've been leaning towards the Elephant and Rider model of decision-making, or drawing from this pithy tweet by Stephen Kaas. In your case, I think, your elephant wants to surf the web, and it has a lot more brainpower than your goal-setting rider who wants to finish the paper.
In a practical sense, I think this means you want to put yourself in situations where success is the default, expected result. Use your conscious mind to set up the system, once, then the full power of your brain will work towards your goal, rather than have your "seek cheap entertainment" drive fighting your "finish my paper" drive. (Easier said than done!)
Paul Graham has two computers, one online and the other disconnected from the Internet, and his rule is "you can waste as much time as you want, as long as it's on the other computer". That works for him. Scott Adams' rule is "go to the gym five times a week" even if that means walking through the doors and then walking out immediately. He says, "losers have goals and winners have systems."
This is a little like "burning the boats."
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn-boats/
In most cases, an euphemism for internet addiction.
Nah, if I don't waste time on the internet I very easily find other ways to waste time instead.
Akrasia is getting stuck in a local optimum. It's more pleasant to spend the next instant surfing the internet than writing your paper, so that's what many simple optimizing algorithms (such as a hill-climbing algorithm) will end up doing, rather than "discover" that having finished the paper will be even better.
Couldn't it be a primitive reflex that starts a chain of locally intentional actions leading to "browsing the internet"? For example, you don't know what to write next so you alt-tab to the web browser. In itself that isn't a complicated reflex - sometimes I find myself alt-tabbing and not remembering what I was alt-tabbing for. Once you get to your web browser, you start making these locally intentional actions - i.e within the scope of a web browser's functionality - and when you finally realize what you've done it feels like one big intentional action.
That's a good thought, thanks.
A bit late but I just want to chime in that the consensus is that akratic action is intentional. You CAN act intentionally against your better judgment, and your example of wasting time on the internet is almost certainly an intentional rather than reflex action.