I think you’re probably quite correct about that example, and similar things. I notice other people doing this a lot, and I catch myself at it sometimes. So I think noticing and eliminating this particular flaw in logic is helpful.
I also think the underlying problem goes deeper. Because we want to stay up and watch that video, our brain will come up with excuses to do it, and we’ll be biased to just quickly accept those excuses when we otherwise would recognize them as logically flawed, because we want to.
This is motivated reasoning. I think it’s the single most impactful and pervasive bias. I spent some years studying this, but I haven’t yet gotten around to writing about it on LW because it’s not directly alignment-relevant. I really need to do at least a short post, because it is relevant for basically navigating and understanding all psychology. Including the field of alignment research.
This raises the question of what it means to want to do something, and who exactly (or which cognitive system) is doing the wanting.
Of course I do want to keep watching YT, but I also recognize there’s a cost to it. So on some level, weighing the pros and cons, I (or at least an earlier version of me) sincerely do want to go to bed by 10:30pm. But, in the moment, the tradeoffs look different from how they appeared from further away, and I make (or, default into) a different decision.
An interesting hypothetical here is whether I’d stay up longer when play time starts at 11:30pm than when play time starts at, say, 10:15pm (if bedtime is 10:30pm). The wanting to play, and the temptation to ignore the cost, might be similar in both scenarios. But this sunk cost / binary outcome fallacy would suggest that I’ll (marginally) blow further past my deadline in the former situation than in the latter.
I think you’re probably quite correct about that example, and similar things. I notice other people doing this a lot, and I catch myself at it sometimes. So I think noticing and eliminating this particular flaw in logic is helpful.
I also think the underlying problem goes deeper. Because we want to stay up and watch that video, our brain will come up with excuses to do it, and we’ll be biased to just quickly accept those excuses when we otherwise would recognize them as logically flawed, because we want to.
This is motivated reasoning. I think it’s the single most impactful and pervasive bias. I spent some years studying this, but I haven’t yet gotten around to writing about it on LW because it’s not directly alignment-relevant. I really need to do at least a short post, because it is relevant for basically navigating and understanding all psychology. Including the field of alignment research.
This raises the question of what it means to want to do something, and who exactly (or which cognitive system) is doing the wanting.
Of course I do want to keep watching YT, but I also recognize there’s a cost to it. So on some level, weighing the pros and cons, I (or at least an earlier version of me) sincerely do want to go to bed by 10:30pm. But, in the moment, the tradeoffs look different from how they appeared from further away, and I make (or, default into) a different decision.
An interesting hypothetical here is whether I’d stay up longer when play time starts at 11:30pm than when play time starts at, say, 10:15pm (if bedtime is 10:30pm). The wanting to play, and the temptation to ignore the cost, might be similar in both scenarios. But this sunk cost / binary outcome fallacy would suggest that I’ll (marginally) blow further past my deadline in the former situation than in the latter.