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Viliam_Bur comments on Kurzban et al. on opportunity cost models of mental fatigue and resource-based models of willpower - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (17)
Thank you, this distinction between "feeling sleepy as a mechanism to get more sleep" and "feeling sleepy as a crude mechanism to just stop doing whatever you are doing now" seems very useful! So I should generally treat sleepiness as a signal which means "stop doing what you are doing", without necessarily meaning "...and get some sleep".
Although a short rest or nap would probably not be harmful, because it does stop doing what I was doing, and provides me a time to reflect on my next actions. Short meditation would help too.
Still, not quite. Basically, what Kurzban is saying is that that bad feeling that people attribute to "mental fatigue" is really just a residual feeling left over from the aversive-state votes of the monitoring mechanisms. It's not actually a way for your brain to try to communicate to you, at a conscious level, that you should do something different. You feeling that bad feeling is just a side-effect of that decision making process taking place (or, a decision that has already taken place). And, if I understand correctly, you'll feel that bad feeling more strongly when the votes from the monitoring mechanisms are more negative (which is why it generally feels harder to do things that are less immediately rewarding). If you are actually feeling like you need to sleep, though, I think that is a feeling that is actually not a part of this model.