The things I’ve always needed to consciously exert “willpower” to do were always those I’d much rather not be doing at the time and needed to be pressured into doing by external forces. Such as homework.
What do you think of the piconomics description of willpower—that willpower is when at a distance we prefer a longer-term gain over a shorter-term gain, but that preference reverses as we get closer to the decision, and willpower is our long-term preferences winning over our short-term ones?
Neither are your “true preferences”—but preferences changes lead to self-defeating behaviour. If you put your vodka in the loft in the morning to prevent yourself drinking it, and then get it down again in the evening when you change your mind, that’s two trips into the loft whose only purpose is to counter each other, which is wasted effort by any measure. Whatever you value, it has to make sense to “straighten out” your preferences so you’re not fighting against yourself.
Also, I really do mean “short-term” vs “long-term”; it’s not a proxy for “fun” vs “praiseworthy”. I had a friend who was damaging her health by taking too many class A drugs. One of the things I tried to say to talk her out of it was that since she liked class As, her goal should be to maximize the total amount of class As she took across her whole life. As it is, her health is now so bad she’s had to cut them out altogether, whereas more care when younger could have meant a lifetime of enjoying them.
Oddly, I haven’t regretted it yet. If anything, the things I regret most tend to be those things I have been told to do in order to improve my future prospects. (For example, I could have had less misery in my life if I had been allowed to drop out of college.)
So on those occasions either the costs have yet to present themselves fully, or you misassesed the future cost/benefit sheet for those decisions at the time. You speak as if you now expect to consistently misassess such things in future and are weighting things in favour of your short-term thinking to counter that. I’m pretty sure that’s not rational.
Is it willpower that keeps me doing level grinding in RPGs when I’m not having fun and all I care about is getting to the next cutscene? Or that led me to make the 400th attempt at beating the final boss of “Prinny: Can I Really be the Hero?” after dying 399 times? (Note: It really did take me more than 400 attempts before I finally beat that boss!)
Is it willpower that makes me decide that I probably shouldn’t buy that bag of chips in the grocery store?
Is it willpower that I use when I tell my mom that no, I’m not going to do that task she’s telling me to do, and then stick to my decision in spite of her pressure on me to back down?
It could be, in any of those cases. You really don’t give enough information.
In the first two cases, it could be willpower, or habit and/or inertia, or some combination of the three. In the third, it depends on whether you find the chips to be tempting or not—making the same kind of decision over whether or not to buy apples is significantly less likely to involve willpower. In the fourth case, it could go either way, depending on how you react to that kind of situation: I find the rewards of that kind of assertiveness obvious enough that doesn’t usually take willpower to be assertive, but I also know people who find that kind of situation stressful and would definitely have to make an effort to stick to their decision.
This definition may be useful (though I usually like to mull definitions over before I share them, which I haven’t in this case): Willpower is the ability to override your system one reactions and impulses so that you can accomplish something that doesn’t have a reward that’s visible to system one. This implies that your system-one’s ability to model things (edit: and not get distracted by shiny things or overwhelmed by emotion) will have a large effect on what things you need to use willpower to do. (Which explains why I’m not a fan of using willpower, too.)
The things I’ve always needed to consciously exert “willpower” to do were always those I’d much rather not be doing at the time and needed to be pressured into doing by external forces. Such as homework.
What do you think of the piconomics description of willpower—that willpower is when at a distance we prefer a longer-term gain over a shorter-term gain, but that preference reverses as we get closer to the decision, and willpower is our long-term preferences winning over our short-term ones?
I tend to view my short-term preferences as my true ones instead of my long-term ones.
Neither are your “true preferences”—but preferences changes lead to self-defeating behaviour. If you put your vodka in the loft in the morning to prevent yourself drinking it, and then get it down again in the evening when you change your mind, that’s two trips into the loft whose only purpose is to counter each other, which is wasted effort by any measure. Whatever you value, it has to make sense to “straighten out” your preferences so you’re not fighting against yourself.
Also, I really do mean “short-term” vs “long-term”; it’s not a proxy for “fun” vs “praiseworthy”. I had a friend who was damaging her health by taking too many class A drugs. One of the things I tried to say to talk her out of it was that since she liked class As, her goal should be to maximize the total amount of class As she took across her whole life. As it is, her health is now so bad she’s had to cut them out altogether, whereas more care when younger could have meant a lifetime of enjoying them.
I’ve made conscious decisions to try to care as little as possible about my own personal (distant) future, especially since I don’t expect my life to improve in the future.
You can anticipate now that you will regret that decision later.
Oddly, I haven’t regretted it yet. If anything, the things I regret most tend to be those things I have been told to do in order to improve my future prospects. (For example, I could have had less misery in my life if I had been allowed to drop out of college.)
So on those occasions either the costs have yet to present themselves fully, or you misassesed the future cost/benefit sheet for those decisions at the time. You speak as if you now expect to consistently misassess such things in future and are weighting things in favour of your short-term thinking to counter that. I’m pretty sure that’s not rational.
That sounds like a valid example of truly not wanting to do something. That’s not the only use of willpower, though.
Is it willpower that keeps me doing level grinding in RPGs when I’m not having fun and all I care about is getting to the next cutscene? Or that led me to make the 400th attempt at beating the final boss of “Prinny: Can I Really be the Hero?” after dying 399 times? (Note: It really did take me more than 400 attempts before I finally beat that boss!)
Is it willpower that makes me decide that I probably shouldn’t buy that bag of chips in the grocery store?
Is it willpower that I use when I tell my mom that no, I’m not going to do that task she’s telling me to do, and then stick to my decision in spite of her pressure on me to back down?
It could be, in any of those cases. You really don’t give enough information.
In the first two cases, it could be willpower, or habit and/or inertia, or some combination of the three. In the third, it depends on whether you find the chips to be tempting or not—making the same kind of decision over whether or not to buy apples is significantly less likely to involve willpower. In the fourth case, it could go either way, depending on how you react to that kind of situation: I find the rewards of that kind of assertiveness obvious enough that doesn’t usually take willpower to be assertive, but I also know people who find that kind of situation stressful and would definitely have to make an effort to stick to their decision.
This definition may be useful (though I usually like to mull definitions over before I share them, which I haven’t in this case): Willpower is the ability to override your system one reactions and impulses so that you can accomplish something that doesn’t have a reward that’s visible to system one. This implies that your system-one’s ability to model things (edit: and not get distracted by shiny things or overwhelmed by emotion) will have a large effect on what things you need to use willpower to do. (Which explains why I’m not a fan of using willpower, too.)