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Henrik_Jonsson comments on Applied Picoeconomics - Less Wrong
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Comments (76)
You probably meant to write "alcohol" here.
All data, even anecdotal, on how to beat akrasia is great, and this sounds like a method that might work well in many cases. If you wanted to raise your odds of succeeding even more you could probably make your oath in front of a group of friends or family members, or even include a rule about donating your money or time if you failed, preferably to a cause you hated for bonus motivation.
I'd like to give a public oath myself, but I'm going away shortly and will be busy with various things, so I don't know how much time I will have for self-improvement. In somewhat of a coincidence, I just received "Breakdown of Will" in the mail yesterday. How about this.. I proudly and publicly swear to read the entire book "Breakdown of Will" by George Ainslie and write an interesting post on LW based on the book before July 17th 2009, so help me Bayes.
I read the book, but found it rambling and poorly supported. The basic point about agents with hyperbolic discounting having dynamic inconsistencies is very important, but I wouldn't recommend the book over Ainslie's article. The only mental note I made of something new (for me) and interesting was a point about issues with a "bright line" being much easier to handle than those without. For example, it's easier to stop drinking alcohol completely than to drink less than a specific limit at each occasion, and even harder to eat a proper diet, when you obviously cannot make us of the only very bright line; no food at all.
I have been busy (with the SIAI summer program), but I do think I actually would have found time to write the post if I had found more data that was both interesting and not obvious to the LW crowd. This might be rationalization, but I don't think the me of one month ago would have wanted a post written about the book if he had known the contents of the book.