Intuitively, this feels like a great idea, and I want to participate. I just have to raise the question: what if I end up spending too much time on the internet reading about beating akrasia and not getting things done? Especially if I feel like I’ve done my good deed for the day.
This is a possible failure mode. You have to decide for yourself:
Participating costs some time. Reducing akrasia would effectively gain you some time (you’d spend more time doing what you want to be doing). How do the two amounts of time compare?
If you participate, what is your estimate of success?
For me, participation seems very much worthwhile, but clearly this will differ for different people.
Note: since you can quit at any time, if you just try it and see what happens, the risk doesn’t seem that great.
Why? The danger Normal_Anomaly talked about is in loss of time invested without any return on it. “Try it for a little while, see what happens, you’re only investing a little time so the risk isn’t great” is a reasonable approach.
It does indeed seem reasonable to me… but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the expression “you can quit at any time” used in a context where it turned out to be totally accurate. I should have been more specific about my alarm bells: many things seem like they would be easy to stop “whenever you want”, but then it turns out to be hard to want to stop in the first place. I.e. “I can quite whenever I want to… I just don’t want to.”
Specifically: participating in an activity that ostensibly fights akrasia as a distraction or a form of procrastination seems like it’s very much opening up the door to the Good Deed failure mode. Maybe those alarm bells aren’t applicable to people in general, but I’m confident that such a failure mode would be likely for me.
But I really do like the idea of an Anti-Akrasia Alliance, and I do think such an endeavor could benefit many people, including myself. I just think that Normal Anomaly’s point is important, and we should consider ways of avoiding that failure mode. I’ll edit this post with some ideas for how to do that if I think of any—sorry to have offered such non-constructive criticism, I just wanted to make it clear that Normal Anomaly wasn’t the only person worried about this particular problem.
I should have been more specific about my alarm bells: many things seem like they would be easy to stop
I understand this potential problem, but it doesn’t seem to be exactly the same as the Good Deed potential problem. Are you talking about one failure more or two?
Specifically: participating in an activity that ostensibly fights akrasia as a distraction or a form of procrastination seems like it’s very much opening up the door to the Good Deed failure mode.
I see the problem. If we can do something about it, that would be great—I await your suggestions.
But notice that it’s only a real problem if 3A is ineffective! Otherwise it will be worth it, even if initially we forgo other Good Deeds as we work on the problem of akrasia.
Certainly, in the case that 3A is ultimately ineffective, participating in it will be a net loss of time, willpower, Good Deeds, etc.
You’re right, I was first making a point about the general propensity of humans to become addicted to activities (“I want to want to stop, but I don’t want to stop”), and then I moved on to discussing the other failure mode. I’ve been up all night reading; looks like my brains got a little scrambled.
An idea for preventing the Good Deed problem: have a points system based on actually getting work done—you post your goals on a profile of sorts, as well as your progress on them, and other members (or I guess you could do this for yourself) have a way to assign you points based on your work; you have to spend some points to use the site, though (e.g. it costs points to view other peoples’ profiles, to make posts, etc.). That way, you have to actually get stuff done to participate in the first place, and keep getting stuff done to keep participating. This is just a suggestion; I haven’t fully thought it through yet.
I also wanted to note that I was taking the Outside View when I noted the Addiction failure mode (spending so much time on 3A that it prevented real work from getting done). I’ve wasted a lot of time on points systems and lists, instead of just getting stuff done.
I’ve wasted a lot of time on points systems and lists, instead of just getting stuff done.
The problem (akrasia) is that you can’t just get stuff done. That’s why you can’t directly compare “just getting things done” to other things. Of course if you could just get things done, that would be far better than using lists; the reason you use lists is because you can’t get things done otherwise!
The fact that lists didn’t work well for you, and you still didn’t get stuff done even though you used lists a lot, means you need to search for a different way. But if lists did work, and you spent e.g. 40% of your time managing lists and the other 60% doing actual work, that would be a great improvement over 30% just getting things done without lists and 70% procrastination.
Intuitively, this feels like a great idea, and I want to participate. I just have to raise the question: what if I end up spending too much time on the internet reading about beating akrasia and not getting things done? Especially if I feel like I’ve done my good deed for the day.
This is a possible failure mode. You have to decide for yourself:
Participating costs some time. Reducing akrasia would effectively gain you some time (you’d spend more time doing what you want to be doing). How do the two amounts of time compare?
If you participate, what is your estimate of success?
For me, participation seems very much worthwhile, but clearly this will differ for different people.
Note: since you can quit at any time, if you just try it and see what happens, the risk doesn’t seem that great.
Even in context, this sets off some serious alarm bells for me.
Why? The danger Normal_Anomaly talked about is in loss of time invested without any return on it. “Try it for a little while, see what happens, you’re only investing a little time so the risk isn’t great” is a reasonable approach.
It does indeed seem reasonable to me… but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the expression “you can quit at any time” used in a context where it turned out to be totally accurate. I should have been more specific about my alarm bells: many things seem like they would be easy to stop “whenever you want”, but then it turns out to be hard to want to stop in the first place. I.e. “I can quite whenever I want to… I just don’t want to.”
Specifically: participating in an activity that ostensibly fights akrasia as a distraction or a form of procrastination seems like it’s very much opening up the door to the Good Deed failure mode. Maybe those alarm bells aren’t applicable to people in general, but I’m confident that such a failure mode would be likely for me.
But I really do like the idea of an Anti-Akrasia Alliance, and I do think such an endeavor could benefit many people, including myself. I just think that Normal Anomaly’s point is important, and we should consider ways of avoiding that failure mode. I’ll edit this post with some ideas for how to do that if I think of any—sorry to have offered such non-constructive criticism, I just wanted to make it clear that Normal Anomaly wasn’t the only person worried about this particular problem.
I understand this potential problem, but it doesn’t seem to be exactly the same as the Good Deed potential problem. Are you talking about one failure more or two?
I see the problem. If we can do something about it, that would be great—I await your suggestions.
But notice that it’s only a real problem if 3A is ineffective! Otherwise it will be worth it, even if initially we forgo other Good Deeds as we work on the problem of akrasia.
Certainly, in the case that 3A is ultimately ineffective, participating in it will be a net loss of time, willpower, Good Deeds, etc.
You’re right, I was first making a point about the general propensity of humans to become addicted to activities (“I want to want to stop, but I don’t want to stop”), and then I moved on to discussing the other failure mode. I’ve been up all night reading; looks like my brains got a little scrambled.
An idea for preventing the Good Deed problem: have a points system based on actually getting work done—you post your goals on a profile of sorts, as well as your progress on them, and other members (or I guess you could do this for yourself) have a way to assign you points based on your work; you have to spend some points to use the site, though (e.g. it costs points to view other peoples’ profiles, to make posts, etc.). That way, you have to actually get stuff done to participate in the first place, and keep getting stuff done to keep participating. This is just a suggestion; I haven’t fully thought it through yet.
I also wanted to note that I was taking the Outside View when I noted the Addiction failure mode (spending so much time on 3A that it prevented real work from getting done). I’ve wasted a lot of time on points systems and lists, instead of just getting stuff done.
The problem (akrasia) is that you can’t just get stuff done. That’s why you can’t directly compare “just getting things done” to other things. Of course if you could just get things done, that would be far better than using lists; the reason you use lists is because you can’t get things done otherwise!
The fact that lists didn’t work well for you, and you still didn’t get stuff done even though you used lists a lot, means you need to search for a different way. But if lists did work, and you spent e.g. 40% of your time managing lists and the other 60% doing actual work, that would be a great improvement over 30% just getting things done without lists and 70% procrastination.
Your point is good, and I’m going to try it. I just thought the possibility of this failure mode should be mentioned in hope of preventing it.