Z_M_Davis comments on Share Your Anti-Akrasia Tricks - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Vladimir_Golovin 15 May 2009 07:06PM

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Comment author: Z_M_Davis 16 May 2009 03:59:57AM 12 points [-]

This is probably a standard tactic, but maybe I phrase it in helpful words.

My akrasia problems have gotten significantly better since I stopped thinking so much in terms of discipline and more in terms of not-being-stupid. One imagines that a race of expected utility maximizers would use the same word for I should and I want. If I think that I ought to to X, then I can just---do X, because I've decided that X is the right thing to do. It's not a matter of forcing myself to do things that I don't want to do (that would just be stupid; the entire point of instrumental rationality is to get us more of what we want); it's a matter of wanting to do good things. Don't raise the pressure; lower the resistance! Cf. "Inner Goodness."

Of course I'm a human and it doesn't really work that way, but I am doing ever so much better than I was this time last year. Because of this community, I've just been continually obsessing about rationality for the last year and a half, and I think I've finally just passed the threshold where it starts to yield practical benefits. However, I'm an unusual person along several dimensions and I've faced very strange personal circumstances in the past year and a half, so I don't expect my experiences to generalize too much, in this domain or others.