I have no confusion about the word ‘akrasia’. I believe you are confused about just how general it is appropriate to apply your label ‘conflict’ as the cause of ‘won’t-startia’. If you apply it near-tautologically then it is too fuzzy to make any predictions. If you don’t then you must acknowledge that there are reasons for ‘won’t-startia’ that are not best described as ‘conflict’. The obvious proof of concept example is “take a perfectly RMI (etc) hacked brain and consider what happens when an unfortunate blood clot occurs in the appropriate area in the prefrontal cortex”.
Your ‘conflict’ model becomes stronger and more useful once you can specify the boundaries of where it applies.
If you don’t then you must acknowledge that there are reasons for ‘won’t-startia’ that are not best described as ‘conflict’.
Of course. Note that the original post also addresses reducing the negative effects of conflict. But it probably would’ve been better to state at some point in there, “assuming correct hardware function”.
(On the other hand, I didn’t say that for the same very good reason I discourage people from thinking about agency: in the common case, people use it to excuse their inability to do something, rather than understanding just how high a bar their evidence has to meet to qualify as either a true (and unworkaroundable) hardware problem or a true “agency”.)
There is sometimes a conflict between ‘optimal for people to believe’ and ‘most true’. The downside of presenting a model as a ‘hypothesis’ and ‘near tautological truth’ without specifying limits of what it is intended to model is that it validates objections such as the one Orthonormal has made here.
The main concern I have is that this hypothesis is a fuzzy theory of the workings of the mind which appears to be more rigorous than it is: it seems to me that one could explain any experimental outcome by inventing more and more sources of conflict.
Holding back the ‘whole truth’ from people who are actually rational also limits their options. If someone has no room in their ‘map’ to allow for actual hardware considerations then that prevents them from considering any options available to them for improving their hardware. And there are options for improving the function of the brain in some cases.
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.)
I have no confusion about the word ‘akrasia’. I believe you are confused about just how general it is appropriate to apply your label ‘conflict’ as the cause of ‘won’t-startia’. If you apply it near-tautologically then it is too fuzzy to make any predictions. If you don’t then you must acknowledge that there are reasons for ‘won’t-startia’ that are not best described as ‘conflict’. The obvious proof of concept example is “take a perfectly RMI (etc) hacked brain and consider what happens when an unfortunate blood clot occurs in the appropriate area in the prefrontal cortex”.
Your ‘conflict’ model becomes stronger and more useful once you can specify the boundaries of where it applies.
Of course. Note that the original post also addresses reducing the negative effects of conflict. But it probably would’ve been better to state at some point in there, “assuming correct hardware function”.
(On the other hand, I didn’t say that for the same very good reason I discourage people from thinking about agency: in the common case, people use it to excuse their inability to do something, rather than understanding just how high a bar their evidence has to meet to qualify as either a true (and unworkaroundable) hardware problem or a true “agency”.)
There is sometimes a conflict between ‘optimal for people to believe’ and ‘most true’. The downside of presenting a model as a ‘hypothesis’ and ‘near tautological truth’ without specifying limits of what it is intended to model is that it validates objections such as the one Orthonormal has made here.
Holding back the ‘whole truth’ from people who are actually rational also limits their options. If someone has no room in their ‘map’ to allow for actual hardware considerations then that prevents them from considering any options available to them for improving their hardware. And there are options for improving the function of the brain in some cases.
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.)