Okay, I’ve thought about this for a little bit. I’m interested, but confused. I’ve read the ‘Proposal’ section a couple of times now, and I’m still having a hard time understanding what I’d be committing to. The existing Less Wrong community seems to address at least some of the points here. This proposal seems to contemplate a tighter community-within-a-community which would:
… organize the existing knowledge on [akrasia], analyze members’ akrasia case-histories, identify likely theories, and get enough people to run the appropriate experiments.
I gather that the “experiments” are more intended to find what works for the particular self-selected members as individuals for their own benefit, and the goal is not do rigorous research. Is that right?
Also, I see this topic specifically refers to SarahC’s excellent recent post on kicking akrasia . Is this group intended to provide a permanent forum to replicate and extend what she did there?
I’ve read the ‘Proposal’ section a couple of times now, and I’m still having a hard time understanding what I’d be committing to.
You’d be committing (if you like) to just one thing: fighting akrasia in a shared effort.
I’m not asking anyone to commit to any specific method, because we don’t have one yet and may change methods in the future. The paragraph about “organize the existing knowledge, etc.”, although it is quite meta, still describes a specific approach to the problem; if we find a better one, we’ll do that instead.
As I wrote (“One Big Commitment”), I fear that it may be counterproductive to commit to specific things. We should commit to the goal itself alone, to conserve willpower. I’ll edit the post to make it clearer.
I gather that the “experiments” are more intended to find what works for the particular self-selected members as individuals for their own benefit, and the goal is not do rigorous research. Is that right?
Yes. Of course rigorous research that produces results that would work for all people and not just the actual members would be a very valuable thing! But our goal should be first and foremost to alleviate our own akrasia, because then, if we choose, we can work on alleviating other people’s akrasia much more efficiently.
Also, I see this topic specifically refers to SarahC’s excellent recent post on kicking akrasia . Is this group intended to provide a permanent forum to replicate and extend what she did there?
Certainly posts like that one are useful. Ideally I’d like to have a knowledgebase and a community that can reliably help someone who comes, like SarahC, saying they’re not effective enough and need advice.
Okay, I’ve thought about this for a little bit. I’m interested, but confused. I’ve read the ‘Proposal’ section a couple of times now, and I’m still having a hard time understanding what I’d be committing to. The existing Less Wrong community seems to address at least some of the points here. This proposal seems to contemplate a tighter community-within-a-community which would:
I gather that the “experiments” are more intended to find what works for the particular self-selected members as individuals for their own benefit, and the goal is not do rigorous research. Is that right?
Also, I see this topic specifically refers to SarahC’s excellent recent post on kicking akrasia . Is this group intended to provide a permanent forum to replicate and extend what she did there?
You’d be committing (if you like) to just one thing: fighting akrasia in a shared effort.
I’m not asking anyone to commit to any specific method, because we don’t have one yet and may change methods in the future. The paragraph about “organize the existing knowledge, etc.”, although it is quite meta, still describes a specific approach to the problem; if we find a better one, we’ll do that instead.
As I wrote (“One Big Commitment”), I fear that it may be counterproductive to commit to specific things. We should commit to the goal itself alone, to conserve willpower. I’ll edit the post to make it clearer.
Yes. Of course rigorous research that produces results that would work for all people and not just the actual members would be a very valuable thing! But our goal should be first and foremost to alleviate our own akrasia, because then, if we choose, we can work on alleviating other people’s akrasia much more efficiently.
Certainly posts like that one are useful. Ideally I’d like to have a knowledgebase and a community that can reliably help someone who comes, like SarahC, saying they’re not effective enough and need advice.