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muflax comments on The curse of identity - LessWrong
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Are you saying that I would not take such a pill if it were offered to me in pill form, and my prediction that I would is wrong, or something else?
Yes. As far as I can tell, you already have the option, but don't use it. What makes you think you would do so in future cases? If akratics reliably would take such a pill, wouldn't you expect self-help to work? The phenomenon of people getting results, but still not sticking with it shouldn't exist then.
My own observation is that people generally stop using self-help techniques that actually work, and often report puzzlement as to why they stopped.
So I think akratics would take such a pill. The catch is that self-help is generally a pill that must be taken daily, and as soon as your brain catches up with the connection between taking the pill and making progress on a goal you don't actually want to make progress on... you'll start "mysteriously forgetting" to take the pill.
The only thing I know that works for this sort of situation is getting sufficiently clear on your covert goals to resolve the conflict(s) between them.
I was definitely envisaging a pill that only needs to be taken once, not one that needs to be taken daily.
It's excessive to claim that the hard work, introspection, and personal -change- (the hardest part) required to align your actions with a given goal are equivalent in difficulty or utility to just taking a pill.
Even if self-help techniques consistently worked, you'd still have to compare the opportunity cost of investing that effort with the apparent gains from reaching a goal. And estimating the utility of a goal is really difficult, especially when it's a goal you've never experienced before.