Study: Making decisions makes you tired

25 bgrah449 19 February 2010 08:27PM

Related to: Willpower Hax #487: Execute by Default, The Physiology of Willpower

Making your own decisions makes you procrastinate more and quit sooner than when you're following orders:

Key quote:

Making choices led to reduced self-control (i.e., less physical stamina, reduced persistence in the face of failure, more procrastination, and less quality and quantity of arithmetic calculations). A field study then found that reduced self-control was predicted by shoppers' self-reported degree of previous active decision making. Further studies suggested that choosing is more depleting than merely deliberating and forming preferences about options and more depleting than implementing choices made by someone else and that anticipating the choice task as enjoyable can reduce the depleting effect for the first choices but not for many choices.

Costs to (potentially) eternal life

8 bgrah449 21 January 2010 09:46PM

Imagine Omega came to you and said, "Cryonics will work; it will be possible for you to be resurrected and have the choice between a simulation and a new healthy body, and I can guarantee you live for at least 100,000 years after that. However, for reasons I won't divulge, your surviving to experience this is wholly contingent upon you killing the next three people you see. I can also tell you that the next three people you see, should you fail to kill them, will die childless and will never sign up for cryonics. There is a knife on the ground behind you."

You turn around and see someone. She says, "Wait! You shouldn't kill me because ... "

What does she say that convinces you?

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