I doubt that “akrasia” has a huge amount of construct validity. When I’ve gotten better at stuff it has generally been from domain optimizations that make sense in context, or by getting better at management processes like engaging in realistic goal setting and doing simple time motion studies on myself. I’m in reasonable agreement with PJ’s article on this subject, except I think he wrote that before research came out suggesting that “willpower” was an actively harmful way to frame problems of motivation (like “thinking oneself to be intrinsically smart” is unhelpful).
I find the “Anti-Akrasia Alliance” to sound something like “Novice Programmers Against Software With High Bugginess” who propose that they will fight “bugginess” directly, rather than through the application of a series of small fixes to each new program that they write… with a realistic expectation of numerous bugs until any given program has been debugged.
In any case, I expect that an “Anti-Akrasia Alliance” would, if it succeeded at all, almost necessarily be on topic for the cultivation of theoretically-driven epistemically-sound personal efficacy. Perhaps something analogous to “test driven development” would bubble up? In any case, I would neither vote the content down nor request that people move somewhere else.
If I could make a suggestion, it might be good to use the wiki to store written intervention protocols that include before and after data collection and reporting back to a protocol’s manager. Collect targeted volunteers in periodic discussion threads, have the volunteers try out the protocols, update on the evidence, talk about results, tweak or abandon the protocols. Repeat!
The general process outline could be used for other research with positive externalities that some people in the community are interested in, like intelligence amplification research and sleep management :-)
I doubt that “akrasia” has a huge amount of construct validity. When I’ve gotten better at stuff it has generally been from domain optimizations that make sense in context, or by getting better at management processes like engaging in realistic goal setting and doing simple time motion studies on myself. I’m in reasonable agreement with PJ’s article on this subject, except I think he wrote that before research came out suggesting that “willpower” was an actively harmful way to frame problems of motivation (like “thinking oneself to be intrinsically smart” is unhelpful).
I find the “Anti-Akrasia Alliance” to sound something like “Novice Programmers Against Software With High Bugginess” who propose that they will fight “bugginess” directly, rather than through the application of a series of small fixes to each new program that they write… with a realistic expectation of numerous bugs until any given program has been debugged.
In any case, I expect that an “Anti-Akrasia Alliance” would, if it succeeded at all, almost necessarily be on topic for the cultivation of theoretically-driven epistemically-sound personal efficacy. Perhaps something analogous to “test driven development” would bubble up? In any case, I would neither vote the content down nor request that people move somewhere else.
If I could make a suggestion, it might be good to use the wiki to store written intervention protocols that include before and after data collection and reporting back to a protocol’s manager. Collect targeted volunteers in periodic discussion threads, have the volunteers try out the protocols, update on the evidence, talk about results, tweak or abandon the protocols. Repeat!
The general process outline could be used for other research with positive externalities that some people in the community are interested in, like intelligence amplification research and sleep management :-)