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handoflixue comments on A cure for akrasia - Less Wrong
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I suppose then my issue is that I find the problem/paradox trivial to solve, because if you just write out an actual logical flow chart, there's no individual step that runs in to problems. It's clever word play, but there isn't any actual substance behind it.
It's not actually a paradox, because the refund is guaranteed in advance (either you'll do something akratic because everyone does, or he'll use the paradox logic to weasel out of paying). Regardless of which branch you're on, the actual value of the payout is now effectively 0 - if you know you'll get it inevtiably then getting it now is a trivially small improvement, and if you'll never get it, then... you'll never get it. So no paradox emerges, and the action remains akratic.
Put another way: At best, you've simply regained your money, and thus gained +$0.00. Your own failure to be akratic would, itself, be akratic... and... okay... that reasoning produces a completely different and actually viable paradox, but it still simplifies out to "you'd have to be stupid to take this offer" :)
I don't think you've understood the article: if you have $1000 with Sorensen, you cant' do anything akratic. It's impossible. Which isn't to say your behavior changes at all, it just can't be called akratic anymore.
If you lost well over a thousand dollars through weakness of will by some other mechanism, that would still be akratic.
I don't think you understood my point: You're NOT fixing any actual aspect of your life by spending $1,000, so saying you don't have akrasia is clearly wrong, or else you're using a fairly stupid definition.
Also, Alicorn's point, which I raised twice before.
That is the point of Sorensen's article.
... the point of his article is that you can waste $1,000 doing something that doesn't work?
The point of his article is that we run into an absurdity so long as we understand akrasia to be 'knowingly acting against your self interest' (or some equivalent variation thereof). Suppose I have before me actions A and B, and I judge that A has greater utility. Then I do B.
If this is my problem, we can as easily solve it by raising the utility of B (until my doing B instead of A is no longer irrational) as we can by lowering the utility of B until it is no longer tempting. But it's manifestly absurd to think that I can cure akrasia by raising the utility of B (as Sorensen ironically recommends). Yet nothing about our understanding of akrasia explains this absurdity.
So it must be that our understanding of akrasia is faulty. That's the point of the article.