Yes. As far as I can tell, you already have the option, but don’t use it. What makes you think you would do so in future cases? If akratics reliably would take such a pill, wouldn’t you expect self-help to work? The phenomenon of people getting results, but still not sticking with it shouldn’t exist then.
If akratics reliably would take such a pill, wouldn’t you expect self-help to work?
My own observation is that people generally stop using self-help techniques that actually work, and often report puzzlement as to why they stopped.
So I think akratics would take such a pill. The catch is that self-help is generally a pill that must be taken daily, and as soon as your brain catches up with the connection between taking the pill and making progress on a goal you don’t actually want to make progress on… you’ll start “mysteriously forgetting” to take the pill.
The only thing I know that works for this sort of situation is getting sufficiently clear on your covert goals to resolve the conflict(s) between them.
It’s excessive to claim that the hard work, introspection, and personal -change- (the hardest part) required to align your actions with a given goal are equivalent in difficulty or utility to just taking a pill.
Even if self-help techniques consistently worked, you’d still have to compare the opportunity cost of investing that effort with the apparent gains from reaching a goal. And estimating the utility of a goal is really difficult, especially when it’s a goal you’ve never experienced before.
Yes. As far as I can tell, you already have the option, but don’t use it. What makes you think you would do so in future cases? If akratics reliably would take such a pill, wouldn’t you expect self-help to work? The phenomenon of people getting results, but still not sticking with it shouldn’t exist then.
My own observation is that people generally stop using self-help techniques that actually work, and often report puzzlement as to why they stopped.
So I think akratics would take such a pill. The catch is that self-help is generally a pill that must be taken daily, and as soon as your brain catches up with the connection between taking the pill and making progress on a goal you don’t actually want to make progress on… you’ll start “mysteriously forgetting” to take the pill.
The only thing I know that works for this sort of situation is getting sufficiently clear on your covert goals to resolve the conflict(s) between them.
I was definitely envisaging a pill that only needs to be taken once, not one that needs to be taken daily.
It’s excessive to claim that the hard work, introspection, and personal -change- (the hardest part) required to align your actions with a given goal are equivalent in difficulty or utility to just taking a pill.
Even if self-help techniques consistently worked, you’d still have to compare the opportunity cost of investing that effort with the apparent gains from reaching a goal. And estimating the utility of a goal is really difficult, especially when it’s a goal you’ve never experienced before.