RichardKennaway comments on Reinforcement and Short-Term Rewards as Anti-Akratic - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Intrism 13 April 2013 08:47PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 15 April 2013 01:24:56PM 1 point [-]

Given that in fact, you can eat or drink whatever you want whenever you want, how do you enforce the conditionality on yourself? Isn't this an exercise in role-playing, and if so, how do you sustain the pretence?

Comment author: Intrism 15 April 2013 03:09:30PM *  1 point [-]

you can eat or drink whatever you want whenever you want

Not quite. I don't have any candy easily available to me (I suppose I could buy more, but that would be a pain), aside from what's in the machine. Theoretically, I could eat that whenever I want, but I have some pretty strong incentives not to do so. I've precommitted to not taking any candy out, and I don't want to break the precommitment (plus doing so would probably ruin the system forever). And, of course, there's a very well-placed Schelling fence helping me stay honest, so it's not even that hard.