Akrasia, both the term and its first instance, are from Plato (Wikipedia backs me up on this ;) ).
Wikipedia’s summary is clearer, if less true to the text, than the one I wrote, so, basically, Plato says akrasia is impossible because: “A person never chooses to act poorly or against his better judgment; actions that go against what is best are only a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good.”
As for the weight loss thing, very few people desire “losing weight”; they desire “being fit” or “looking good.” “Losing weight” is merely a means to those ends. It would be like saying you desire going to the dentist; almost no one wants to go to the dentist, but they do want to have good teeth, and it’s necessary to that end. If you look at the problem this way, it makes more sense, though I agree that eating the cheesecake is not necessarily akratic.
As for the weight loss thing, very few people desire “losing weight”; they desire “being fit” or “looking good.”
Actually, very few people desire “being fit” or “looking good”—they are avoiding being fat and looking bad! This is not a trivial distinction, unfortunately.
More precisely, I should say that “few people who are trying and failing to lose weight desire being fit or looking good.” Desiring those things is correlated with success, whereas avoiding other things is correlated with failure.
For one thing, avoidance-based motivation is cyclical: the more weight you lose, the less motivated you’ll be to stay on your diet, since the thing you’re avoiding is further away now.
For another, avoidance motivation is non-specific: it leads you to choose your weight loss methods according to what will least inconvenience you, rather than what will produce the best results. You will also not be committed to any particular technique, since your true goal is to get away from something, rather than moving towards any particular end-state.
Third and finally: avoidance-based motivation is inherently stressful, and stress is not conducive to healthy weight loss.
Two of these issues apply to avoidance-motivation for almost any goal, for almost any person. The third is dependent somewhat on mindset; growth-minded individuals aren’t as stressed by avoidance motivation, presumably because they don’t allow it to become chronic, or possibly because they don’t view what they’re avoiding as reflecting on them to the same extent that fixed-mindset people do.
Avoidance motivation is useful for noticing there’s a problem, but it needs to be quickly turned into the choice of a particular desired direction and goal in order to be useful. This is why so many self-help books harp on defining goals.
Unfortunately, most of them do not explain that it is insufficient to reverse the verbalization of your goals to make them positive. Translating “I wish I weren’t so fat and ugly” to “I want to weigh X pounds by Y date” is not merely a matter of changing the words you’re using. The inner experience to which the words apply, must also be replaced.
For another, avoidance motivation is non-specific: it leads you to choose your weight loss methods according to what will least inconvenience you, rather than what will produce the best results.
IAWYC, but I don’t see how this follows. If I want to get away from New York, I choose the fastest road, the same as if I were going to a point in that direction.
If I want to get away from New York, I choose the fastest road, the same as if I were going to a point in that direction.
If you have only ONE dimension of appropriate choice, sure. But the cognitive architecture for avoiding pain doesn’t seem to make the same kind of trade-offs that the subsystem for obtaining pleasure does. We’re willing to experience pain to get pleasure, but not as willing to trade one pain for reduction in another. We’ll prefer to wait around for something that promises to eliminate the pain without adding any new ones.
That’s why “easy” sells to people trying to lose weight, but “hard” sells to people who are trying to gain strength or build their body. Just look at the marketing for exercise products that boast just how tired their workout is going to make you, vs. the ones that emphasize how easy it’s going to be; the correlation is with the prospect’s direction of motivation, either towards or away-from.
If we were truly consistent in our motivated decision-making, everyone would advertise that their products are easy, as well as effective. In practice, advertising either targets easiness or toughness—with toughness being used as a proxy for effectiveness.
The “easy” products emphasize ease, comfort, and relief, while treating the results as almost incidental… and they also emphasize just how fat and ugly people’s “before” is. “Hard” products put more emphasis on their “afters”, sometimes not even bothering with any “before” pictures!
So, whether it makes logical sense or not, the marketers have figured out that we actually do think this way, and have rationally adapted to maximize their utility. ;-)
Akrasia, both the term and its first instance, are from Plato (Wikipedia backs me up on this ;) ).
Wikipedia’s summary is clearer, if less true to the text, than the one I wrote, so, basically, Plato says akrasia is impossible because: “A person never chooses to act poorly or against his better judgment; actions that go against what is best are only a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good.”
As for the weight loss thing, very few people desire “losing weight”; they desire “being fit” or “looking good.” “Losing weight” is merely a means to those ends. It would be like saying you desire going to the dentist; almost no one wants to go to the dentist, but they do want to have good teeth, and it’s necessary to that end. If you look at the problem this way, it makes more sense, though I agree that eating the cheesecake is not necessarily akratic.
Actually, very few people desire “being fit” or “looking good”—they are avoiding being fat and looking bad! This is not a trivial distinction, unfortunately.
More precisely, I should say that “few people who are trying and failing to lose weight desire being fit or looking good.” Desiring those things is correlated with success, whereas avoiding other things is correlated with failure.
For one thing, avoidance-based motivation is cyclical: the more weight you lose, the less motivated you’ll be to stay on your diet, since the thing you’re avoiding is further away now.
For another, avoidance motivation is non-specific: it leads you to choose your weight loss methods according to what will least inconvenience you, rather than what will produce the best results. You will also not be committed to any particular technique, since your true goal is to get away from something, rather than moving towards any particular end-state.
Third and finally: avoidance-based motivation is inherently stressful, and stress is not conducive to healthy weight loss.
Two of these issues apply to avoidance-motivation for almost any goal, for almost any person. The third is dependent somewhat on mindset; growth-minded individuals aren’t as stressed by avoidance motivation, presumably because they don’t allow it to become chronic, or possibly because they don’t view what they’re avoiding as reflecting on them to the same extent that fixed-mindset people do.
Avoidance motivation is useful for noticing there’s a problem, but it needs to be quickly turned into the choice of a particular desired direction and goal in order to be useful. This is why so many self-help books harp on defining goals.
Unfortunately, most of them do not explain that it is insufficient to reverse the verbalization of your goals to make them positive. Translating “I wish I weren’t so fat and ugly” to “I want to weigh X pounds by Y date” is not merely a matter of changing the words you’re using. The inner experience to which the words apply, must also be replaced.
IAWYC, but I don’t see how this follows. If I want to get away from New York, I choose the fastest road, the same as if I were going to a point in that direction.
If you have only ONE dimension of appropriate choice, sure. But the cognitive architecture for avoiding pain doesn’t seem to make the same kind of trade-offs that the subsystem for obtaining pleasure does. We’re willing to experience pain to get pleasure, but not as willing to trade one pain for reduction in another. We’ll prefer to wait around for something that promises to eliminate the pain without adding any new ones.
That’s why “easy” sells to people trying to lose weight, but “hard” sells to people who are trying to gain strength or build their body. Just look at the marketing for exercise products that boast just how tired their workout is going to make you, vs. the ones that emphasize how easy it’s going to be; the correlation is with the prospect’s direction of motivation, either towards or away-from.
If we were truly consistent in our motivated decision-making, everyone would advertise that their products are easy, as well as effective. In practice, advertising either targets easiness or toughness—with toughness being used as a proxy for effectiveness.
The “easy” products emphasize ease, comfort, and relief, while treating the results as almost incidental… and they also emphasize just how fat and ugly people’s “before” is. “Hard” products put more emphasis on their “afters”, sometimes not even bothering with any “before” pictures!
So, whether it makes logical sense or not, the marketers have figured out that we actually do think this way, and have rationally adapted to maximize their utility. ;-)
Hm. I suppose I’ve never studied exercise literature that closely.
Not surprising, since Paul is sometimes called the Platonizer of Christianity.