I think you’re underestimating how common akrasia is among the rest of the world. It’s just not seen as that bad of a thing if people spend their time off watching TV, eating unhealthily, or spending hours on the internet.
I think others are just more likely to call it “laziness” or “procrastination”. The word “Akrasia” seems like some weird lesswrongian turn of language that doesn’t really shed much more light.
Actually, I’d argue that it’s the word “laziness” that obscures matters. It suggests someone who just doesn’t want to work and thinks that’s alright, or is at least ambiguous between that and akrasia. And procrastination is specifically postponing things all the time; not all akrasia is like that. You can acratically fail to make use of a one-time opportunity.
“I hate myself for being lazy” has 36.000 results on google, which suggests some people at least don’t think it’s alright (i.e. don’t use the same definition as you).
But even if the term “Akrasia” was clearer than “lazy” (I agree it may be), you could say:
“Akrasia” is clearer than “Laziness” because it has a more precise meaning
“Laziness” is clearer than “Akrasia” because much more people know what the word means
I don’t really think our use of the word is a problem tho, it’s just worth keeping in mind that we’re trading off a little bit more precision for being less understandable to the outside world. But that’s always going on with jargon.
It heavily depends on how we define “we”. None, measure implicitly that weighs people by frequency of comments will find that “we” have much worse akrasia than one that doesn’t.
I think you’re underestimating how common akrasia is among the rest of the world. It’s just not seen as that bad of a thing if people spend their time off watching TV, eating unhealthily, or spending hours on the internet.
This would be interesting to know: Do we (however we define the “we” group) really have more akrasia, or are we just more aware of it?
I think others are just more likely to call it “laziness” or “procrastination”. The word “Akrasia” seems like some weird lesswrongian turn of language that doesn’t really shed much more light.
Actually, I’d argue that it’s the word “laziness” that obscures matters. It suggests someone who just doesn’t want to work and thinks that’s alright, or is at least ambiguous between that and akrasia. And procrastination is specifically postponing things all the time; not all akrasia is like that. You can acratically fail to make use of a one-time opportunity.
“I hate myself for being lazy” has 36.000 results on google, which suggests some people at least don’t think it’s alright (i.e. don’t use the same definition as you).
But even if the term “Akrasia” was clearer than “lazy” (I agree it may be), you could say:
“Akrasia” is clearer than “Laziness” because it has a more precise meaning
“Laziness” is clearer than “Akrasia” because much more people know what the word means
I don’t really think our use of the word is a problem tho, it’s just worth keeping in mind that we’re trading off a little bit more precision for being less understandable to the outside world. But that’s always going on with jargon.
Also:
“Akrasia” is clearer than “Laziness” because the things people believe about laziness tend are often false and so not what is being referred to.
But Viliam_Bur is referring to akrasia and all of it’s related phenomena.
It heavily depends on how we define “we”. None, measure implicitly that weighs people by frequency of comments will find that “we” have much worse akrasia than one that doesn’t.