We’ve gone out on a limb with the akrasia discussion. Posts seem like they are using loose references to published material to justify grand pet theories. The term akrasia has become a tent under which all manner of effects and phenomena are being housed. A counter-reductionist trend has set in. The definition of akrasia grows, the manners of dealing with it expand, possible theories of methods of its identification and mitigation can be found in every other top level post. It has the feel of rat hole.
There is too much explanation and not enough prediction. What am I to anticipate?
Solving the problem of the erosion of will and of short term preferences is going to take more than pouring cold water into our own ears. It is likely not generally solvable through introspection.
This discussion of akrasia afflicts this community like a kind of akrasia—a fertile field for arm chair theories to distract us from harder problems.
Meditation? Really? “Reset my experiential pica?” What?
I propose a one month ban on the akrasia topic. If there is something to be gained through introspection on the subject let those with an interest introspect. For now, though, the only thing these posts lead me to anticipate is a post titled “Akrasia: Because of Magic!”
I was thinking of posting a reply to this like “Hey, this is all very interesting, but you have no evidence whatsoever for it.” Decided against it, because it’s not being presented as a proven theory. It’s being presented as an interesting and elegant possibility that deserves further discussion, or a fertile direction for future research. That puts it on the same footing as eg superstrings, and sometimes one of those sorts of things is the creative seed someone else needs.
No one’s going to discover a simple cure-all that works for everyone, but I’ve already [gotten something really useful to me] partly out of our discussions here, and the comments there make it look like some other people have done the same.
Even if we don’t expect any further direct benefits, it might end up kind of like the moonshot, which wasn’t too useful in itself but which more than made back its cost in generating peripheral technology. The akrasia discussion has led to some really good peripheral posts like Utilons vs. Hedons, which clarified a lot for me, and some very introductory discussion of PCT, which pjeby thinks explains everything about everything. The comments in my Preferences thread are making me think harder about the differences between the conscious and unconscious than I’ve ever done before.
And it’s not like this is costing us anything. There aren’t many posts on LW as it is, you can ignore any you don’t like, and the limiting resource on working more on “harder” questions is less time and attention than it is intelligence and inspiration.
PCT, which pjeby thinks explains everything about everything
Not at all. It merely fills a lot of gaps and simplifies things in the model of mind that I already had. But my overall model still contains things that I consider to be lacking in the explanation department, and which PCT doesn’t really touch. PCT has become a central metaphor in my model, but it’s quite far from the entirety of my model.
For example, PCT has little to directly say about status, self-esteem, and the like, except insofar as it implies these are controlled perceptual variables like any other. (That is, that we have ranges for them that we’re comfortable with, outside of which we take action to restore them to that range.) PCT also doesn’t make much distinction between controlled “avoidance” variables (e.g “amount of pain”) and controlled “approach” variables (e.g. “amount of pleasure”), and I find those to be rather important practical distinctions.
In addition, one of the first mindhacking techniques I usually teach to people (dubbed “feeling elimination”) has no obvious connection to PCT, nor really a very good explanation at all. I know that it works, and many of the parameters that make it work or not work in a given instance, but as to how it really works, I know very little.
However, despite these inadequacies, PCT actually doesn’t have any competition as a generalized reductionist model of behavior. Not since Skinner has anybody in the field of psychology even tried to make such a generalized model, AFAIK, let alone succeeded half as well as PCT.
While I agree with the substance of your point, I take exception to this:
...is going to take more than pouring cold water into our own ears.
It’s too common for people to assume that big, difficult problems must have big, difficult solutions. You can’t possibly know that no simple solution exists unless you have a sufficiently detailed model of the problem to extract a non-simple solution. It’s reasonable to dismiss any particular proposed simple solution if the proposal isn’t backed by real evidence, but that shouldn’t discourage us from looking for evidence that points to solutions of unknown difficulty.
I suspect that people here have more of a problem with willpower/motivation than average, so they press “upvote!” on anything that promises, however vaguely, to solve their problem.
EDIT:
Wikipedia states that there is “scant research” “which suggests that the disorder is caused by mineral deficiency in many cases”, and also lists other possible causes such as OCD. So Pica may, or may not, be mostly related to deficiencies. We also know that the rate of incidence of Pica is low in general, i.e. < 5% of people probably have it, so conclusions drawn about people who have Pica may not generalize well.
this post infers possible causation based upon a sample size of 1
Eh? Pica) is a known disorder. The sample size for the causation claim is clearly more than 1.
[ETA: In case anyone’s wondering why this comment no longer makes any sense, it’s because most of the original parent was removed after I made it, and replaced with the current second para.]
EDIT: The claim that Pica is a known disorder is distinct from claims about what causes it. The only evidence given in the post is one personal experience. However, the wikipedia article does state that
scant research that has been done on the causes of pica suggests that the disorder is caused by mineral deficiency in many cases, typically iron deficiency
referencing a study which states that:
Pica is probably a behavior pattern driven by multiple factors. Some recent evidence supports including pica with the obsessive-compulsive spectrum of disorders. Many different treatment regimens have been described, with variable responses. It is important to be aware of this common, but commonly missed, condition.
I suspect that people here have more of a problem with willpower/motivation than average, so they press “upvote!” on anything that promises, however vaguely, to solve their problem.
It has always seemed to me that the Less Wrong community treats akrasia like a problem that needs to be solved rather than simply a flaw that needs to be avoided; this, and the fact that krasia is a sort of rationality, seem to explain why we discuss it so much.
We’ve gone out on a limb with the akrasia discussion. Posts seem like they are using loose references to published material to justify grand pet theories. The term akrasia has become a tent under which all manner of effects and phenomena are being housed. A counter-reductionist trend has set in. The definition of akrasia grows, the manners of dealing with it expand, possible theories of methods of its identification and mitigation can be found in every other top level post. It has the feel of rat hole.
There is too much explanation and not enough prediction. What am I to anticipate?
Solving the problem of the erosion of will and of short term preferences is going to take more than pouring cold water into our own ears. It is likely not generally solvable through introspection.
This discussion of akrasia afflicts this community like a kind of akrasia—a fertile field for arm chair theories to distract us from harder problems.
Meditation? Really? “Reset my experiential pica?” What?
I propose a one month ban on the akrasia topic. If there is something to be gained through introspection on the subject let those with an interest introspect. For now, though, the only thing these posts lead me to anticipate is a post titled “Akrasia: Because of Magic!”
I was thinking of posting a reply to this like “Hey, this is all very interesting, but you have no evidence whatsoever for it.” Decided against it, because it’s not being presented as a proven theory. It’s being presented as an interesting and elegant possibility that deserves further discussion, or a fertile direction for future research. That puts it on the same footing as eg superstrings, and sometimes one of those sorts of things is the creative seed someone else needs.
No one’s going to discover a simple cure-all that works for everyone, but I’ve already [gotten something really useful to me] partly out of our discussions here, and the comments there make it look like some other people have done the same.
Even if we don’t expect any further direct benefits, it might end up kind of like the moonshot, which wasn’t too useful in itself but which more than made back its cost in generating peripheral technology. The akrasia discussion has led to some really good peripheral posts like Utilons vs. Hedons, which clarified a lot for me, and some very introductory discussion of PCT, which pjeby thinks explains everything about everything. The comments in my Preferences thread are making me think harder about the differences between the conscious and unconscious than I’ve ever done before.
And it’s not like this is costing us anything. There aren’t many posts on LW as it is, you can ignore any you don’t like, and the limiting resource on working more on “harder” questions is less time and attention than it is intelligence and inspiration.
Not at all. It merely fills a lot of gaps and simplifies things in the model of mind that I already had. But my overall model still contains things that I consider to be lacking in the explanation department, and which PCT doesn’t really touch. PCT has become a central metaphor in my model, but it’s quite far from the entirety of my model.
For example, PCT has little to directly say about status, self-esteem, and the like, except insofar as it implies these are controlled perceptual variables like any other. (That is, that we have ranges for them that we’re comfortable with, outside of which we take action to restore them to that range.) PCT also doesn’t make much distinction between controlled “avoidance” variables (e.g “amount of pain”) and controlled “approach” variables (e.g. “amount of pleasure”), and I find those to be rather important practical distinctions.
In addition, one of the first mindhacking techniques I usually teach to people (dubbed “feeling elimination”) has no obvious connection to PCT, nor really a very good explanation at all. I know that it works, and many of the parameters that make it work or not work in a given instance, but as to how it really works, I know very little.
However, despite these inadequacies, PCT actually doesn’t have any competition as a generalized reductionist model of behavior. Not since Skinner has anybody in the field of psychology even tried to make such a generalized model, AFAIK, let alone succeeded half as well as PCT.
While I agree with the substance of your point, I take exception to this:
It’s too common for people to assume that big, difficult problems must have big, difficult solutions. You can’t possibly know that no simple solution exists unless you have a sufficiently detailed model of the problem to extract a non-simple solution. It’s reasonable to dismiss any particular proposed simple solution if the proposal isn’t backed by real evidence, but that shouldn’t discourage us from looking for evidence that points to solutions of unknown difficulty.
I suspect that people here have more of a problem with willpower/motivation than average, so they press “upvote!” on anything that promises, however vaguely, to solve their problem.
EDIT:
Wikipedia states that there is “scant research” “which suggests that the disorder is caused by mineral deficiency in many cases”, and also lists other possible causes such as OCD. So Pica may, or may not, be mostly related to deficiencies. We also know that the rate of incidence of Pica is low in general, i.e. < 5% of people probably have it, so conclusions drawn about people who have Pica may not generalize well.
Eh? Pica) is a known disorder. The sample size for the causation claim is clearly more than 1.
[ETA: In case anyone’s wondering why this comment no longer makes any sense, it’s because most of the original parent was removed after I made it, and replaced with the current second para.]
EDIT: The claim that Pica is a known disorder is distinct from claims about what causes it. The only evidence given in the post is one personal experience. However, the wikipedia article does state that
referencing a study which states that:
It has always seemed to me that the Less Wrong community treats akrasia like a problem that needs to be solved rather than simply a flaw that needs to be avoided; this, and the fact that krasia is a sort of rationality, seem to explain why we discuss it so much.