It’s not just akrasia, or rather, the implication of strong akrasia really weirds me out.
The easiest mechanism to implement goals would not be vulnerable to akrasia. At best it would be used to conserve limited resources, but that’s clearly not the case here. In fact, some goals work just fine, while others fail. This is especially notable when the same activity can have very different levels of akrasia depending on why I’m doing it. Blaming this on hodge-podge circuitry seems false to me (in the general case).
So I look for other explanations, and signaling is a pretty good starting point. What I thought was a real goal was just a social facade, e.g. I don’t want to study, I just want to be seen as having a degree. (Strong evidence for this is that I enjoy reading books for some personal research when I hated literally the same books when I had to read them for class.)
Because of this, I’m generally not convinced that my ability to do stuff is broken (at least not as badly), but rather, that I’m mistaken about what I really want. But as Xixidu mentioned, when you start applying rationality to that, you end up changing your own values in the process and not always in a pretty way.
At least at my end, I’m pretty sure that part of my problem isn’t that signalling is causing me to override my real desires, it’s that there’s something about feeling that I have to signal leads to me not wanting to cooperate, even if the action is something that I would otherwise want to do, or at least not mind all that much.
Writing this has made the issue clearer for me than it’s been, but it’s not completely clear—I think there’s a combination of fear and anger involved, and it’s a goddam shame that my customers (a decent and friendly bunch) are activating stuff that got built up when I was a kid.
I don’t want to study, I just want to be seen as having a degree. (Strong evidence for this is that I enjoy reading books for some personal research when I hated literally the same books when I had to read them for class.)
Fair enough, I guess I misunderstood what you were saying.
But as Xixidu mentioned, when you start applying rationality to that, you end up changing your own values in the process and not always in a pretty way.
I guess its not guaranteed to turn out well, and when I was still working through my value-conflicts it wasn’t fun. In the end though, the clarity that I got from knowing a few of my actual goals and values feels pretty liberating. Knowing (some of) what I want makes it soooo much easier for me to figure out how to do things that will make me happy, and with less regret or second thoughts after I decide.
It’s not just akrasia, or rather, the implication of strong akrasia really weirds me out.
The easiest mechanism to implement goals would not be vulnerable to akrasia. At best it would be used to conserve limited resources, but that’s clearly not the case here. In fact, some goals work just fine, while others fail. This is especially notable when the same activity can have very different levels of akrasia depending on why I’m doing it. Blaming this on hodge-podge circuitry seems false to me (in the general case).
So I look for other explanations, and signaling is a pretty good starting point. What I thought was a real goal was just a social facade, e.g. I don’t want to study, I just want to be seen as having a degree. (Strong evidence for this is that I enjoy reading books for some personal research when I hated literally the same books when I had to read them for class.)
Because of this, I’m generally not convinced that my ability to do stuff is broken (at least not as badly), but rather, that I’m mistaken about what I really want. But as Xixidu mentioned, when you start applying rationality to that, you end up changing your own values in the process and not always in a pretty way.
At least at my end, I’m pretty sure that part of my problem isn’t that signalling is causing me to override my real desires, it’s that there’s something about feeling that I have to signal leads to me not wanting to cooperate, even if the action is something that I would otherwise want to do, or at least not mind all that much.
Writing this has made the issue clearer for me than it’s been, but it’s not completely clear—I think there’s a combination of fear and anger involved, and it’s a goddam shame that my customers (a decent and friendly bunch) are activating stuff that got built up when I was a kid.
Fair enough, I guess I misunderstood what you were saying.
I guess its not guaranteed to turn out well, and when I was still working through my value-conflicts it wasn’t fun. In the end though, the clarity that I got from knowing a few of my actual goals and values feels pretty liberating. Knowing (some of) what I want makes it soooo much easier for me to figure out how to do things that will make me happy, and with less regret or second thoughts after I decide.