Holding back the ‘whole truth’ from people who are actually rational also limits their options.
Remember that bit in HItchhiker’s Guide where they gave the guy too much truth serum, and he started to tell The Whole Truth? That’s what I felt like while trying to write this article, trying to figure out what NOT to include. (For example, I left out how this entire classification scheme is just a routine application of Goldratt’s theory of constraints to troubleshooting any sort of problem, not just akrasia.)
There is a LOT of truth, you have to pick some place to start. And that place depends on your purpose in the telling.
In this case, the purpose of framing this idea as a hypothesis was to provide a stepping stone for people to grok something important, that’s independent of the hypothesis itself.
Specifically: that akrasia is not a thing, and that this lack-of-thingness has various real effects and consequences. The hypothesis itself is a throwaway: you could replace it with a variety of similar hypotheses, and the effect would still be the same in practical terms.
(In retrospect, it probably might have been better called a “thought experiment” than a hypothesis.)
Anyway, I had a few very narrow purposes for this post, and they would not have been served by adding too much information—the post is a bit long for LW as it is. Everything is a tradeoff.
And there are options for improving the function of the brain in some cases.
Yep, just like I listed in the very first category of methods: hygienic/systemic methods like meditation, exercise, etc. If your brain function is truly the constraint, then that’s the thing to fix.
(If I’d wanted to make a larger point about ToC—and I do in the long run, just not in this post—then I’d have explained that the categories I chose to group methods into are based on possible failure nodes in a causal chain… not unlike block-diagramming a car and classifying car-not-startia into problems of ignition, compression, air/fuel mix, etc. etc. These groupings are only partially dependent upon a notion of “conflict”. Anyway, that’s why there’s a mention of causal chains in the article’s epilog.)
Remember that bit in HItchhiker’s Guide where they gave the guy too much truth serum, and he started to tell The Whole Truth? That’s what I felt like while trying to write this article, trying to figure out what NOT to include. (For example, I left out how this entire classification scheme is just a routine application of Goldratt’s theory of constraints to troubleshooting any sort of problem, not just akrasia.)
There is a LOT of truth, you have to pick some place to start. And that place depends on your purpose in the telling.
In this case, the purpose of framing this idea as a hypothesis was to provide a stepping stone for people to grok something important, that’s independent of the hypothesis itself.
Specifically: that akrasia is not a thing, and that this lack-of-thingness has various real effects and consequences. The hypothesis itself is a throwaway: you could replace it with a variety of similar hypotheses, and the effect would still be the same in practical terms.
(In retrospect, it probably might have been better called a “thought experiment” than a hypothesis.)
Anyway, I had a few very narrow purposes for this post, and they would not have been served by adding too much information—the post is a bit long for LW as it is. Everything is a tradeoff.
Yep, just like I listed in the very first category of methods: hygienic/systemic methods like meditation, exercise, etc. If your brain function is truly the constraint, then that’s the thing to fix.
(If I’d wanted to make a larger point about ToC—and I do in the long run, just not in this post—then I’d have explained that the categories I chose to group methods into are based on possible failure nodes in a causal chain… not unlike block-diagramming a car and classifying car-not-startia into problems of ignition, compression, air/fuel mix, etc. etc. These groupings are only partially dependent upon a notion of “conflict”. Anyway, that’s why there’s a mention of causal chains in the article’s epilog.)