The wikipedia article for Abductive Reasoning claims this sort of privileging the hypothesis can be seen as an instance of affirming the consequent.

Aside from learning as a way to acquire useful skills, there are certain things I learn in order to change the way I think. Echoing similar comments, programming seems to have altered my perspective as a kid and continues to do so. One example is learning Lisp. It's become popular to learn lisp not because it is practically useful in day-to-day coding (though it can be), but because it changes the way you think about how to program.

Similarly, studying abstract algebra might be a waste of my time (though I'll understand Lie groups and hence theoretical physics better), but the way it warps (in a good way) my mind cannot be attained by any other (present) means.

This might not be original, but my most valuable skill then seems to be learning how to learn, which includes honing my intuition of what is important to learn.

"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into." (Jonathan Swift )

I think the original question is valid as such, but there are tons of valid questions that could be asked in similar manner. What I think the article lacks is some insight or just some effort in trying to understand the problem more deeply. Insights don't have to be ground-breaking, but I think articles around here should provide some value to the reader. Now it seems more like a "hey guys, what do you think of free will?" type of query.

I suspect that if you would spend some time and effort to try to pin-point the exact problem or perhaps to generalize the problem (or whatever), it might lead you into interesting insights. Let's say through this process you come up with a heuristic or principle for this problem. If the article provided that, it might have some value to the reader and by the virtue of being more specific, it could also spark up interesting discussion. Now it just seems way too open-ended question. Not that it cannot be answered, but that it doesn't inspire commentary.

(As an example, perhaps you could have expanded on the opening metaphor. I don't know if it would have lead anywhere interesting, but one never knows.)

The first time I went ice skating a couple years ago, I flailed around dangerously for a bit, and was unable to exert much control over my path. I comically ran into a female friend and wound up in an unflattering position, and it was forceful/painful enough for all present to understand that I hadn't done it on purpose...

Then my roommate took me aside and explained what motion to do, with a few hand gestures. After about 45 seconds of explanation, it clicked in my mind, and I went out and was able to skate around quite gracefully in comparison to a few minutes before. I was surprised at how well it worked.

I suspect that this falls into the "quick learner who is told of a motion that approximates good skating," though.

I agree, but "normal" threads on LW are not supposed to be just normal threads.

OK, so your major piece of evidence arguing against the 'conflicting-minds' paradigm is that once we conquer some akrasia and get started, we 'feel wonderful'?

I don't think that works. Akrasia is about things we do enjoy, and also about things we don't enjoy.

I have akrasia about going to my Taekwondo classes, even though I know perfectly well that I'll enjoy them once I'm there. But I also have akrasia about things I don't enjoy doing (like working through homework problems) - and this latter case is by far the majority of akrasia instances.

The former is easily explained by different time-preferences - one part of me prefers the here and now, while another part recognizes that stopping whatever I'm doing, getting ready, and going to class will lead to a more enjoyable and healthy hour than my current activity. And the latter is easily explained the same way by multiple factions as well, as simply one faction valuing the abstract utility or long-term consequences over avoiding the short-term disutility.

Forming/eliminating habits has nothing to do with it, except as a tactic to support one side over the other. ('I don't want to go to Taekwondo!' 'But this is what we usually do at this time, and someone's waiting - come along already.') And this insight - that there are multiple factions - is the contribution of the naive/cynical theory. Once we know that, we can figure out how to exploit the stupidity or greed of the disfavored faction.

The Cynic's Theory may in fact describe a true state of mind, but it is not describing akrasia. The Cynic's Theory might better describe those minds whose preferences are placed by exterior influences that conflict with their internal, consciously hidden preferences. An example may be someone who always thought they wanted to be a doctor but deep down knew they wanted to be an artist.

However, when I think of Akrasia, I don't think of incompatible goals or hidden preferences, I think of compatible goals but an inability to consciously exert control of your willpower in achieving the agreed upon goals. When you finally stop procrastinating and get going, you feel wonderful and wonder why you couldn't have done it sooner--but then you go through the same problem the next time again. Akrasia is a problem of forming/eliminating automatic behaviors, aka habits. So in my opinion, the Cynic's theory does not shed any light on the problem of akrasia.

Just give up already

I cannot say how many arguments I've had where this would have prevented hurt feelings. Often, after the argument, I discover the other person persisted in arguing for about 10 minutes after they realized they were wrong, all the while getting more angry at me for shooting down ever worse rationalizations.

To be fair, the way this happens isn't that the person persists in arguing for something they know to be false; instead, they drop a subtle hint that maybe they might be wrong and we should stop talking about it now (presumably so they can save face). I invariably miss this hint (well, I'm better now that I know to be looking for it, but not a lot) because it's usually in the form of a ridiculous but hard to disprove objection, to which I (because I'm weird) will come up with a medium-good response. This pisses my interlocutor off, because I missed their social cue, and because I've now forced them to defend a belief (their lousy objection) that they don't actually hold.

This behavior is very understandable; once I noticed others doing it, I noticed a tendency in myself. It's surprisingly hard to say, "Oops, I guess I'm wrong," or, "I can't see a good counter argument to what you're saying; maybe I need to reconsider."

Anyway, I'm saying this because the article linked by the quoted phrase wasn't quite what I was hoping for on the subject. :)