John Cheese from Cracked.com pulls out another few loops of bloodsoaked intestine and slaps them on the page as a ridiculously popular Internet humour piece: 9 YouTube Videos That Prove Anyone Can Get Sober. I hate watching video, and I sat down and watched the lot. Horrifying and compelling. I’ve been spending this afternoon reading the original thread. It’s really bludgeoning home to me just how much we’re robots made of meat and what a hard time the mind has trying to steer the elephant. Fighting akrasia is one thing—how do you fight an addiction with the power of your mind?
It’s not all that obvious, even during the lucid periods. At least, I’ve never found it so… it’s very easy to fall into the trap of “I don’t need to fix the roof; it’s sunny out” and fail to take advantage of the lucid periods to set up systems that I can rely on in the crazy periods.
But the only way I’ve ever found that works in the long run is to devote effort during lucid periods to setting up the environment, and then hope that environment gets me through the crazy periods.
Natch, that depends on having lucid periods, and on something in the system being able to tell the difference (if not my own brain, then something else I will either trust during the crazy periods, or that can enforce compliance without my proximal cooperation).
If I can’t trust my own brain, and I also can’t trust anything else more than my own brain (in the short term), then I’m fucked.
John Cheese from Cracked.com pulls out another few loops of bloodsoaked intestine and slaps them on the page as a ridiculously popular Internet humour piece: 9 YouTube Videos That Prove Anyone Can Get Sober. I hate watching video, and I sat down and watched the lot. Horrifying and compelling. I’ve been spending this afternoon reading the original thread. It’s really bludgeoning home to me just how much we’re robots made of meat and what a hard time the mind has trying to steer the elephant. Fighting akrasia is one thing—how do you fight an addiction with the power of your mind?
You set up an environment for yourself where the patterns of that addiction are less likely to drive you to do things you don’t endorse.
That’s obvious when the cravings aren’t eating your brain, but that thread is all about how hard that can be in practice.
It’s not all that obvious, even during the lucid periods. At least, I’ve never found it so… it’s very easy to fall into the trap of “I don’t need to fix the roof; it’s sunny out” and fail to take advantage of the lucid periods to set up systems that I can rely on in the crazy periods.
But the only way I’ve ever found that works in the long run is to devote effort during lucid periods to setting up the environment, and then hope that environment gets me through the crazy periods.
Natch, that depends on having lucid periods, and on something in the system being able to tell the difference (if not my own brain, then something else I will either trust during the crazy periods, or that can enforce compliance without my proximal cooperation).
If I can’t trust my own brain, and I also can’t trust anything else more than my own brain (in the short term), then I’m fucked.