I half agree and half disagree. I agree that it is good idea to look at different problems and determine what solutions apply to them individually.
But I disagree that there is no general summary of “akrasia.” I would summarize it like this:
Your general planning ability does not take sufficiently into account energy cost, that is, energy cost in the ancestral environment. Consequently you tend on a regular basis to make plans that involve high energy expenditure and little benefit, that is, plans that would be bad plans in the ancestral environment. You have various protection mechanisms built in to prevent you from carrying out these plans, since they would waste energy and therefore be dangerous. And these protection mechanisms are themselves many and various, and so lead to what you are calling various problems. But they are all for the same purpose: to stop you from wasting energy when your life is perfectly fine the way it is.
If we continue the analogy with cognitive biases, I think we can make a similar statement along the lines of quick heuristics that were good back in the past when you lived in a less-globalized village, original need for split-second decisions, etc. etc.
I think the point still stands, though, that we should try to move away from the idea of generalized anti-akrasia weapons and look more into the exact specifics of the problem from an instrumental perspective.
I half agree and half disagree. I agree that it is good idea to look at different problems and determine what solutions apply to them individually.
But I disagree that there is no general summary of “akrasia.” I would summarize it like this:
Your general planning ability does not take sufficiently into account energy cost, that is, energy cost in the ancestral environment. Consequently you tend on a regular basis to make plans that involve high energy expenditure and little benefit, that is, plans that would be bad plans in the ancestral environment. You have various protection mechanisms built in to prevent you from carrying out these plans, since they would waste energy and therefore be dangerous. And these protection mechanisms are themselves many and various, and so lead to what you are calling various problems. But they are all for the same purpose: to stop you from wasting energy when your life is perfectly fine the way it is.
That seems good.
If we continue the analogy with cognitive biases, I think we can make a similar statement along the lines of quick heuristics that were good back in the past when you lived in a less-globalized village, original need for split-second decisions, etc. etc.
I think the point still stands, though, that we should try to move away from the idea of generalized anti-akrasia weapons and look more into the exact specifics of the problem from an instrumental perspective.