“Trying to lose weight? Just eat less and exercise more!”
“Trying to get more done? Just stop wasting time!”
“Feeling depressed? Just cheer up!”
“Want not to get pregnant? Just don’t have sex!”
Answer: they would all be quite successful if followed, but they are all difficult enough to follow that people who actually care about results will do better to set different goals that take more account of how human decision-making actually works.
If you eat less and exercise more then, indeed, you will lose weight. (I do not know how reliably you will lose weight by losing fat, which of course is usually the actual goal.) But you don’t exactly get to choose to eat less and exercise more; you get to choose to aim to do those things, but willpower is limited and akrasia is real and aiming to eat less and exercise more may be markedly less effective than (e.g.) aiming to reduce consumption of carbohydrates, or aiming to keep a careful tally of everything you eat, or aiming to stop eating things with sugar in, or whatever.
People with plenty of willpower, or unusually fast metabolism, or brains less-than-averagely inclined to make them eat everything tasty they see around them, may have excellent success by just aiming to eat less and exercise more. In the same way, for many people “just cheer up!” may be sufficient to avoid depression; for many people “just don’t have sex if you don’t want to have babies!” may be sufficient to avoid unwanted pregnancy; etc.
But there are plenty of people for whom that doesn’t work so well, and this is true even among very smart people, very successful people, or almost any category of people not gerrymandered to force it to be false. And for those people, the “just do X” advice simply will not work, and sneering at them because they are casting around for methods other than “just do X” is simply a sign of callousness or incomprehension.
You focused on akrasia, and obviously this is a component.
My guess was: they’re all wildly underdetermined. “Cheer up” isn’t a primitive op. “Don’t have sex” or “eat less and exercise more” sound like they might be primitive ops, but can be cashed out in many different ways. “Eat less and exercise more, without excessively disrupting your career/social life/general health/etc” is not a primitive op at all, and may require many non-obvious steps.
“Trying to lose weight? Just eat less and exercise more!”
“Trying to get more done? Just stop wasting time!”
“Feeling depressed? Just cheer up!”
“Want not to get pregnant? Just don’t have sex!”
Answer: they would all be quite successful if followed, but they are all difficult enough to follow that people who actually care about results will do better to set different goals that take more account of how human decision-making actually works.
The specifics are very different in each of these examples, as Wes_W noted here.
“Trying to lose weight? Just eat less and exercise more!”
Is at lest not actively bad advise, but “cheer up” isn’t a primitive.
“Want not to get pregnant? Just don’t have sex!”
Is actually good advise and a little investigation reveals that the people saying otherwise are placing nearly as much (or even more) value on “you having sex” as on “you not getting pregnant”.
If you eat less and exercise more then, indeed, you will lose weight.
Surprisingly, some people don’t even believe this. I know a sizable group of Paleo proponents and some fruitarians who say that you can eat whatever quantity of food x and this will not have negative effects on your weight.
There are also people who think this advice won’t work because they’ve tried and it didn’t had any effect (but actually they weren’t aware that they were not eating less).
But there are plenty of people for whom that doesn’t work so well, and this is true even among very smart people, very successful people, or almost any category of people not gerrymandered to force it to be false.
I am between those people (those who fail to follow the simple advice, not the very smart or very successful). But I recognize that my failure is in proceeding to eat less from the simple cognition of “I must eat less”. That doesn’t make “eat less” useless, it makes it incomplete. Indeed, when I found a system that allowed me to eat less using whatever low willpower that I have, I indeed started to lose weight.
“But actually they weren’t aware that they were not eating less.”
This is why I advocate the method of using a Beeminder weight goal (or some equivalent), weigh yourself every day, and don’t eat for the rest of the day when you are above the center line. When you are below it, you can eat whatever you want for the rest of the day.
This doesn’t take very much willpower because there is a very bright line, you don’t have to carefully control what or how much you eat, it’s either you eat today or you don’t.
It doesn’t matter. Fluctuations with scales and with water retention may mean that you may end up fasting an extra day here and there for random reasons, but you will also end up eating on extra days for the same reason. It ends up the same on average.
weigh yourself every day, and don’t eat for the rest of the day when you are above the center line
That has some issues. First, changes in water retention jitter your daily weight by a pound or two. Second, you assume good tolerance for intermittent fasting. If you weight yourself in the morning, decide you’re not going to eat for the whole day, and then suffer a major sugar crash in the afternoon, that will be problematic.
Yes, it won’t work for people who can’t manage a day without eating at least from time to time, although you can also try slowing down the rate of change.
As I said in another comment, changes in water retention (and scale flucuations etc.) don’t really matter because it will come out the same on average.
don’t really matter because it will come out the same on average.
Volatility matters. Imagine that one day the temperature in your house was set to 50F (+10C) and the next day—to 90F (+32C). On the average it comes out to 70F (+20C), so it’s fine, right?
Creating a calorie deficit will cause weight loss. Just like abstinence will prevent pregnancy.
Depression is not like this. You can’t necessarily will yourself free of depression. You could will yourself to “act happy” until the grave, but it wouldn’t necessarily change your neurons.
The point is that you can’t necessarily will yourself to eat less or not have sex or stop wasting time, either. It looks as if you can, but appearances can be misleading.
I agree that depression is a more extreme case, though; a depressed person may be unable to “cheer up” on any single occasion, whereas I think most people can resist temptations to food, sex and timewasting once if they really need to.
(Also, depression isn’t just persistent unhappiness, but that’s usually part of it and is what would be fixed by Just Cheering Up, were that possible for the sufferer.)
The point is that you can’t necessarily will yourself to eat less or not have sex or stop wasting time, either. It looks as if you can, but appearances can be misleading.
Do you think you can necessarily will yourself to drink less (alcohol)?
The debate about “personal responsibility” vs “can’t help him/herself” is very old.
No. More precisely: I’m pretty sure I can. I’m pretty sure most alcoholics can’t. But they may be able to will themselves to drink no alcohol at all, just as it may be easier to follow a diet like “nothing containing sugar” than one like “no more than 2000 kcal/day”.)
I suggest that we should actually care less about whether in some abstract sense we can do these things (exactly what we “can” do will probably depend strongly on the definition of “can”), and more about whether we will. And on that, I think the empirical evidence is pretty good: for many people, just deciding to eat less will probably not result in actually losing weight and keeping it off.
I suggest that we should actually care less about whether in some abstract sense we can do these things … and more about whether we will.
These are somewhat different concerns in the sense that “can” is not sufficient for “will”, but it is necessary for “will”. Since I cannot fly by flapping my arms, the question of whether I will fly this way doesn’t have much meaning.
I suggest that, instead, we stop pretending that there are solutions suitable to absolutely everyone. People are different and are sufficiently different to require quite different approaches. If we take weight as the example, some people (commonly called “that bitch/bastard” :-D) can eat whatever they want and maintain weight; some people can control their weight purely by willing themselves to eat less; some people can control their weight by setting up a system of tricks and misdirections for themselves which works; some people cannot control their weight by themselves and need external help; some people can’t do it even with external help and need something like a gastric bypass; and some people have a sufficiently screwed up metabolism so that pretty much nothing will make them slim.
What do the following have in common?
“Trying to lose weight? Just eat less and exercise more!”
“Trying to get more done? Just stop wasting time!”
“Feeling depressed? Just cheer up!”
“Want not to get pregnant? Just don’t have sex!”
Answer: they would all be quite successful if followed, but they are all difficult enough to follow that people who actually care about results will do better to set different goals that take more account of how human decision-making actually works.
If you eat less and exercise more then, indeed, you will lose weight. (I do not know how reliably you will lose weight by losing fat, which of course is usually the actual goal.) But you don’t exactly get to choose to eat less and exercise more; you get to choose to aim to do those things, but willpower is limited and akrasia is real and aiming to eat less and exercise more may be markedly less effective than (e.g.) aiming to reduce consumption of carbohydrates, or aiming to keep a careful tally of everything you eat, or aiming to stop eating things with sugar in, or whatever.
People with plenty of willpower, or unusually fast metabolism, or brains less-than-averagely inclined to make them eat everything tasty they see around them, may have excellent success by just aiming to eat less and exercise more. In the same way, for many people “just cheer up!” may be sufficient to avoid depression; for many people “just don’t have sex if you don’t want to have babies!” may be sufficient to avoid unwanted pregnancy; etc.
But there are plenty of people for whom that doesn’t work so well, and this is true even among very smart people, very successful people, or almost any category of people not gerrymandered to force it to be false. And for those people, the “just do X” advice simply will not work, and sneering at them because they are casting around for methods other than “just do X” is simply a sign of callousness or incomprehension.
This is true. But, unfortunately, those people often come to the conclusion that “X never works” and they defend this position with great tenacity.
The typical mind (or body) fallacy is pervasive :-/
You focused on akrasia, and obviously this is a component.
My guess was: they’re all wildly underdetermined. “Cheer up” isn’t a primitive op. “Don’t have sex” or “eat less and exercise more” sound like they might be primitive ops, but can be cashed out in many different ways. “Eat less and exercise more, without excessively disrupting your career/social life/general health/etc” is not a primitive op at all, and may require many non-obvious steps.
The specifics are very different in each of these examples, as Wes_W noted here.
Is the only one that’s potentially actively bad advise, for the same reason “pee a lot, don’t drink any water, and stay away from heavy food like vegetables” is bad advice.
Is at lest not actively bad advise, but “cheer up” isn’t a primitive.
Is actually good advise and a little investigation reveals that the people saying otherwise are placing nearly as much (or even more) value on “you having sex” as on “you not getting pregnant”.
Surprisingly, some people don’t even believe this. I know a sizable group of Paleo proponents and some fruitarians who say that you can eat whatever quantity of food x and this will not have negative effects on your weight. There are also people who think this advice won’t work because they’ve tried and it didn’t had any effect (but actually they weren’t aware that they were not eating less).
I am between those people (those who fail to follow the simple advice, not the very smart or very successful). But I recognize that my failure is in proceeding to eat less from the simple cognition of “I must eat less”. That doesn’t make “eat less” useless, it makes it incomplete. Indeed, when I found a system that allowed me to eat less using whatever low willpower that I have, I indeed started to lose weight.
“But actually they weren’t aware that they were not eating less.”
This is why I advocate the method of using a Beeminder weight goal (or some equivalent), weigh yourself every day, and don’t eat for the rest of the day when you are above the center line. When you are below it, you can eat whatever you want for the rest of the day.
This doesn’t take very much willpower because there is a very bright line, you don’t have to carefully control what or how much you eat, it’s either you eat today or you don’t.
Do scales actually work with enough accuracy that doing this even makes any sense?
It doesn’t matter. Fluctuations with scales and with water retention may mean that you may end up fasting an extra day here and there for random reasons, but you will also end up eating on extra days for the same reason. It ends up the same on average.
That has some issues. First, changes in water retention jitter your daily weight by a pound or two. Second, you assume good tolerance for intermittent fasting. If you weight yourself in the morning, decide you’re not going to eat for the whole day, and then suffer a major sugar crash in the afternoon, that will be problematic.
Yes, it won’t work for people who can’t manage a day without eating at least from time to time, although you can also try slowing down the rate of change.
As I said in another comment, changes in water retention (and scale flucuations etc.) don’t really matter because it will come out the same on average.
Volatility matters. Imagine that one day the temperature in your house was set to 50F (+10C) and the next day—to 90F (+32C). On the average it comes out to 70F (+20C), so it’s fine, right?
Creating a calorie deficit will cause weight loss. Just like abstinence will prevent pregnancy.
Depression is not like this. You can’t necessarily will yourself free of depression. You could will yourself to “act happy” until the grave, but it wouldn’t necessarily change your neurons.
The point is that you can’t necessarily will yourself to eat less or not have sex or stop wasting time, either. It looks as if you can, but appearances can be misleading.
I agree that depression is a more extreme case, though; a depressed person may be unable to “cheer up” on any single occasion, whereas I think most people can resist temptations to food, sex and timewasting once if they really need to.
(Also, depression isn’t just persistent unhappiness, but that’s usually part of it and is what would be fixed by Just Cheering Up, were that possible for the sufferer.)
Do you think you can necessarily will yourself to drink less (alcohol)?
The debate about “personal responsibility” vs “can’t help him/herself” is very old.
No. More precisely: I’m pretty sure I can. I’m pretty sure most alcoholics can’t. But they may be able to will themselves to drink no alcohol at all, just as it may be easier to follow a diet like “nothing containing sugar” than one like “no more than 2000 kcal/day”.)
I suggest that we should actually care less about whether in some abstract sense we can do these things (exactly what we “can” do will probably depend strongly on the definition of “can”), and more about whether we will. And on that, I think the empirical evidence is pretty good: for many people, just deciding to eat less will probably not result in actually losing weight and keeping it off.
These are somewhat different concerns in the sense that “can” is not sufficient for “will”, but it is necessary for “will”. Since I cannot fly by flapping my arms, the question of whether I will fly this way doesn’t have much meaning.
I suggest that, instead, we stop pretending that there are solutions suitable to absolutely everyone. People are different and are sufficiently different to require quite different approaches. If we take weight as the example, some people (commonly called “that bitch/bastard” :-D) can eat whatever they want and maintain weight; some people can control their weight purely by willing themselves to eat less; some people can control their weight by setting up a system of tricks and misdirections for themselves which works; some people cannot control their weight by themselves and need external help; some people can’t do it even with external help and need something like a gastric bypass; and some people have a sufficiently screwed up metabolism so that pretty much nothing will make them slim.
There is no general solution—it depends.
I was under the impression that that was pretty much exactly what I’d been saying :-).