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I think it's convincing that the effect, if it exists, is much smaller than the one for weight. The graph for weight is so obvious you don't even need to do statistics.

53 Solving willpower seems easier than solving aging

by Yair Halberstadt

23rd Mar 2025

1 min read

53

I'm awake about 17 hours a day. Of those I'm being productive maybe 10 hours a day.

My working definition of productive is in the direction of: "things that I expect I will be glad I did once I've done them"^[1].

Things that I personally find productive include

Chores
Work
Eating
Cooking
Reading a good book
Watching TV with my Wife/Kids
Playing with the kids
Socialising with friends

But not

Doomscrolling
Watching TV alone
Playing most computer games
Sitting on the couch doing nothing

Reading a book I'm not particularly interested in

etc.

If we could find a magic pill which allowed me to do productive things 17 hours a day instead of 10 without any side effects, that would be approximately equally as valuable as a commensurate increase in life expectancy. Yet the first seems much easier to solve than the second - we already have some drugs which get pretty close (caffeine, amphetamines).^[2]

Now obviously the correct thing to do is both, but in the same way as we want a Manhattan project for anti-aging, we should also advocate for a Manhattan project for focusing/willpower.

^{^}
The point of this definition is to include things like working on a project which failed, but exclude things like playing a computer game which I enjoy at the time but leaves me feeling drained afterwards.
^{^}
I imagine "throw away your phone" will get me 90% of the way there.

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[-]JenniferRM8d*123

I believe that certain kinds of "willpower" is "a thing that a person can have too much of".

Like I think there is a sense that someone can say "I believe X, Y, Z in a theoretical way that has a lot to say about What I Should Be Doing" and then they say "I will now do those behaviors Using My Willpower!"

And then... for some people... using some mental practices that actually just works!

But then, for those people, they sometimes later on look back at what they did and maybe say something like "Oh no! The theory was poorly conceived! Money was lost! People were harmed! I now regret those actions... that I did on purpose... using willpower. Why didn't I notice the signs that I should have stopped?! :-("

"Tentativity" is, I think, often correlated with prudence.

And I think there is a kind of person who gets their verbal goals from other people, and whose verbal goals are kinda silly, who are actually behaviorally protected from regretful outcomes by their inability to "act on what they verbally endorse doing".

And I think the kind of people who are getting their verbal endorsements from unsafe sources are some of the precise people who should consider that maybe they don't have "weak willpower"... maybe they just have "self protecting tentativity"? <3

The problems you would predict seeing with "too much willpower" are similar, in my mind, to the problems you'd predict from the valley of bad rationality.

I think one technique for "getting yourself to do something" involves linking it to some half-controllable emotion so that accomplishment and action and confidence all sorta "go together". If that is the particular mental praxis that someone uses to "do the things they theoretically endorse doing" to "have more willpower" and it went out of control, and it ended up badly, the results might look something like "hubris". (There are also other ways to coach yourself into doing the things you think you should do, but at least one of the big obvious ones has a failure mode that looks like hubris, I think.)

In a way that is kind of related, this caught my eye for being among the NON productive things:

Sitting on the couch doing nothing

If that works for you the way it does for me, then I predict that in many of those moments your brain's default mode network is activated.

This network is actually probably super important. It seems to help people think about memories, actions, possibilities, other people, and so on... It might help process emotions and regrets and hopes, to build up a better narrative self? Watching movies turns it on, but movies might be superstimulus for "the true purpose" of this mental mode, which is sort of maybe to figure out "your own story", and how your own story could go better?

I have experimented some with meditation specifically with the goal of embracing the DMN (with few definite results) but also I think that a lot of meditative practices (even without having neuroimaging studies to prompt them) already aim to meditators to be "aware of the DMN even though it tries to hide itself from active focus" (and maybe in some meditative schemes they aim to turn it off)?

Anyway. I would caution you against quickly throwing "sitting around seeming to do nothing" right out the window without thinking much about that act (if you ever do get the ability to delete things like that from your life's repertoire).

[-]Mateusz Bagiński8d30

This closely parallels the situation with the immune system.

One might think "I want a strong immune system. I want to be able to fight every dangerous pathogen I might encounter."

You go to your local friendly genie and ask for a strong immune system.
The genie fulfills your wish. No more seasonal flu. You don't need to bother with vaccines. You even considered stopping to wash your hands but then you realized that other people are still not immune to whatever bugs might there be on your skin.
Then, a few weeks in, you get an anaphylactic shot when eating your favorite peanut butter sandwich. An ambulance takes you to the hospital where they also tell you that you got Hashimoto.
You go to your genie to ask "WTF?" and the genie replies "You asked for a strong immune system, not a smart one. It was not my task to ensure that it knows that peanut protein is not the protein of some obscure worm even though they might look alike, or that the thyroid is a part of your own body.".

[-]Mateusz Bagiński8d20

I have experimented some with meditation specifically with the goal of embracing the DMN (with few definite results)

I'd be curious to hear more details on what you've tried.

[-]JenniferRM7d20

Replied by DM :-)

[-]Celarix8d102

Strong upvote from me, this is a huge cause issue in my life and I'm sure in many others. Any mental stuff aside, it seems the brain has strong control systems around not wanting to do too much of stuff it doesn't like, and more of stuff it can't get enough of.

One thing I've always wondered about is how a person's affinities and frustrations are made. Why do some people love to write, so much so that time for writing just appears without conscious effort, whereas others find it a grinding chore they can't wait to be done with? What makes some people feel a calling to be, say, a veterinarian or a plumber? Why do most people dislike exercise but a few really love it and couldn't make themselves stop if they tried?

If we can figure this out, maybe we can figure out how to move stuff between categories. Rather than trying to learn how to live with the suck, maybe we can find ways to make stuff not suck, as much as we can, at least.

[-]Viliam8d20

I suspect this may be related to the feedback one gets. Importantly, not just feedback on having accomplished something, but also on working towards something even if you are not there yet -- because this is where you will realistically spend most of your time when working on nontrivial projects.

Writing is probably easy (for an intelligent person) if you have a friendly audience. The question is how to get it before you learn how to write well. Sometimes, the parents provide the service.

[-]cousin_it8d50

I agree feedback is a big part of it. For example, the times in my life when I've been most motivated to play musical instruments were when I had regular opportunities to play in front of people. Whenever that disappeared, the interest went away too.

But also I think some of it is sticky, or due to personality factors. We could even say it's not about willpower at all, but about value differences. Some people are just more okay with homeostasis, staying at a certain level (which can be lower or higher for different people) and using only as much effort as needed for that. While others keep climbing and applying effort without ever reaching a level that lets them relax. Many billionaires seem to be of that second type. I'm more of the first type, with many of my active periods being prompted by external changes, threats to homeostasis. It's clear that type 2 achieves more than type 1, but it's not clear which type is happier and whether one should want to switch types.

[-]Viliam8d40

I don't have a coherent theory of motivation, because when I look at myself, it seems that different parts of my life work quite differently.

For example, when I used to write SF, the social motivation was very important. I had friends who liked SF books and movies, we talked about that a lot, many of us hoped to write something good one day. So I had a community, and an audience. My first attempts had some small success, which inspired me to work harder and achieve more. And then... at some moment this all went down in flames... skipping the unimportant details, I think my mistake was becoming visibly more successful than some people in our community who had higher social status than me, so I got the "status slap-down" and the community became much less friendly towards me, and I lost an important source of motivation. For some time I was motivated by a desire to prove them wrong (for example I avoided a soft blacklist by publishing my story under a pseudonym), but gradually writing stopped being fun, and I stopped writing.

For an opposite example, I am interested in mathematics. Sometimes I read a textbook, do some exercises, try to figure something out. I would prefer to have people around me willing to discuss these topics, but the fact that I don't doesn't stop me at all.

Somewhere in the middle is programming. I am motivated to learn new things, but I am not motivated to finish my projects, and I suspect that having an audience would help here.

I guess I find learning intrinsically rewarding, but producing things requires a social reward (which I need to receive during the process, not only after having completed the product).

With regards to homeostasis, I think I have always tried to achieve more, it's just that my energy and motivation are very limited (more than previously now that I have kids). When I have some free time, I try new things, but often I feel too tired just trying to survive the day. That is, this is partially about me, and partially about my environment. Of course, a stronger internal drive can compensate for a less friendly environment, but a friendly environment can also make a great difference.

[-]cousin_it8d60

Your examples sound familiar to me too, but after rereading your comment and mine, maybe it all can be generalized in a different way. Namely, that internal motivation leads to a low level of effort: reading some textbooks now and then, solving some exercises, producing some small things. It still feels a bit like staying in place. Whereas it takes external motivation to actually move forward with math, or art, or whatever - to spend lots of effort and try to raise my level every day. That's how it feels for me. Maybe some people can do it without external motivation, or maybe they lucked into getting external motivation in the right way, I don't know.

[-]Mateusz Bagiński8d40

Relevant previous discussion: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XYYyzgyuRH5rFN64K/what-makes-people-intellectually-active

[-]gwern8d81

It's worth mentioning in this context that one of the most remarkable things about the recent wave of GLP-1/GIP drugs is that they seem to have large benefits on, for lack of a better word, willpower and psychiatry. Nor was this expected or predicted AFAIK, or clearly linked solely to the weight-loss: the justification in the animal experiments and early human trials were based purely on physiology and then the human diabetics reporting they felt a less hungry. So this is quite remarkable, and part of why GLP-1/GIP drugs are one of the best things to happen to public health in a long time - not just the direct benefits, but the sheer unexpectedness seems to imply that we are about to learn a lot about where these psychiatric & willpower problems really come from.

(The leading theory so far seems to be that inflammation is chronically dysregulated body-wide in a lot of Westerners, especially the fat ones, and this is somehow interfering with impulse control/learning/homeostasis, and the GLP-1/GIPs as a side-effect tamp it down, and allow natural recovery.)

[-]Eric Neyman8d140

Do you think that these drugs significantly help with alcoholism (as one might posit if the drugs help significantly with willpower)? If so, I'm curious what you make of this Dynomight post arguing that so far the results don't look promising.

[-]gwern7d170

I don't think that study shows much either way: too small and underpowered to show much of anything (aside from the attrition undermining internal validity).

Dynomight's primary criticism doesn't hold much water because it is (un-pre-registered) reverse p-hacking. If you check enough covariates, you'll find a failure of randomization to balance on some covariate, and you can, if you wish, tell a post hoc story about how that is actually responsible for the overall mean difference. Nevertheless, randomization works, because on average why would any particular covariate be the way in which the confounding is mediated?

Just have to wait for more studies.

[-]Yair Halberstadt7d20

I think it's convincing that the effect, if it exists, is much smaller than the one for weight. The graph for weight is so obvious you don't even need to do statistics.

[-]gwern7d40

I would not believe that unless you have done a simulation study with the small n of this study, plausible levels of measurement error (alcoholism being much harder to measure than weight or body fat), with about a dozen covariates (to correspond to the different ways to slice the patients and threshold BMI etc), and then shown that you hardly ever get a false negative like this. My experience with doing such power analysis simulation studies for other things inclines me to think that people greatly overestimate how informative such small studies are once you allow for plausible levels of measurement error and (reverse) p-hacking degrees of freedom.

[-]Viliam8d20

Is it possible that the relation between GLP-1 and willpower is basically about willpower depletion? The more mental energy you spend fighting your urge to eat, the less is left for everything else. GLP-1 reduces the hunger, suddenly you have more willpower for everything else.

[-]Mateusz Bagiński8d20

Then the effect would be restricted to people who are trying to control their eating which we would probably have heard of by now.

[-]A1987dM7d73

I'm awake about 17 hours a day.

Have you tried sleeping more? Ceteris paribus I tend to spend waaaay more time unproductively when I'm even mildly sleep-deprived than when I'm not.

[-]kairos_8d70

Adderall helps to combat akrasia to an extent, though results may vary between people (possibly modafinal as well though I haven't tried it). Though it is far from a "magic pill" as the effects of the pill go away + side effects + utility from long term use is uncertain.

How easy would it be to develop a drug that's more effective than Adderall or the other ADHD stimulants? It was developed in the 1970s, nearly 50 years ago, and the fact that we don't have a better alternative right now tells me we picked the low hanging fruit. But are there active efforts to developing a better drug? I'm not sure.

[-]Cognitive Revolutionary 8d51

actually there are dozens of ADHD type stimulants with meaningfully distinct properties that have prescribed (or studded) in humans. Far from having picked the low hanging fruit, the FDA just... stopped picking. For example, before Ketamine was approved, the last time the FDA approved an antidepressant with a new mechanism of action, was over 50 years ago.

[-]kairos_8d10

Is it an FDA issue or moreso a drug discovery issue?

[-]Mateusz Bagiński9d*60

I imagine "throw away your phone" will get me 90% of the way there.

I strongly recommend https://www.minimalistphone.com/

It didn't get me 90% of the way there ("there" being "completely eliminating/solving akrasia") but it probably did reduce [spending time on my phone in ways I don't endorse] by at least one order of magnitude.

[-]nim8d40

"things that I expect I will be glad I did once I've done them"

I like this definition because it allows 2 different routes toward improvement, which you'll probably need to mix to get the best results:

Increase time spent on the activities which are already on your "productive things" list. Taking this to the extreme would likely eliminate load-bearing forms of rest, and drastically increase burnout risks.
Improve recovery activities to bring them from "unproductive" to "productive". You hint at this with reading a good book making the "productive" list but reading a disappointing book falling into "unproductive".

The lowest-hanging fruit for me tend to be in (2): When I'm able to give myself an alternative activity that's equally easy but less regrettable compared to an "unproductive" habit, and notice when to do it, I can often get equivalent results for the function that the bad habit was serving.

[-]quetzal_rainbow8d31

I'm quite skeptical about "easier" due to usual Algernon argument.

Roughly, conceptually, animal activity can be divided into 3 phases:

Active, when animal is looking for food or mate or something.
Sleep (which seems to be a requirement for Earth animals design).
Passive phase in-between when animal doesn't do anything particular, but it shouldn't sleep because of predators (the main problem with sleep as an evolutionary adaptation).

Large herbivores have very short sleep phase and active/passive phase are not very meaningfully different, because food doesn't hide from them and is not very energy-dense, and they should always look out for predators. Large predators have very long sleep phase, short active phase and don't have passive phase - because their search for food is very energy-intense and they don't need to look out for predators.

Humans seem to be comfortably between these two extremes, but I think that unproductive phase in your day is just what it is - unproductive phase, meant only for you to be alert about predators (and fellow tribesmen). You can probably extend your productive phase somewhat by doing known things, like healthy diet, normal sleep, exercise, but it is likely that you have strong biological limit on what you can productively do per day which you can't cross without degradation in quality of life.

I don't think caffeine and amphetamines help here. They just forcefully redistribute activity - if you have ADHD, you are going to work instead of doing whatever you feel like and if you are night owl, you can function better at morning.

You can play on difference between "activity which requires you to be biologically active" and "meaningful activity", like, I don't think watching TV with family is very energetically demanding. Although, it seems to be a time organization problem?

I think that actual solution to "lack of biological willpower" is something like "large bionanotech system which resets organism in the way like sleep resets it" and honestly, I think if you can develop such systems you are not far from actual aging treatment.

[-]cubefox9d30

A drug that fixes akrasia without major side-effects would indeed be the Holy Grail. Unfortunately I don't think caffeine does anything of that sort. For me it increases focus, but it doesn't combat weakness of will, avoidance behavior, ugh fields. I don't know about other existing drugs.

[-]Mateusz Bagiński9d60

Some amphetamines kinda solve akrasia-in-general to some extent (much more so than caffeine), at least for some people.

I'm not claiming that they're worth it.

[-]Valdes7d10

This comment made me subscribe to your posts. I hope to read more on your attempts in the future! (no pressure)

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