The issue is not so much that reason and willpower need to be exercised, as that reason (time spent thinking) is lost if it isn’t spent immediately (the time passes with no insights). Since thinking produces insights that feed into future insights, spending time not thinking about anything is like… keeping money in an account that doesn’t generate interest.
I’m not getting the metaphor of “reason … is lost if isn’t spent immediately.” Do you mean something like “wasted” or “unproductive”? Can you say the same thing again in more words?
I think the confusion stems from a conflict between my definition in the article (reason is time spent thinking) and some of the more common, but less precise definitions (reason is the output of thinking time, or reason is the efficiency or effectiveness of thinking time).
Under the definition that reason is time spent thinking, if you don’t spend it by thinking about something, then that time wasn’t reason at all, so it’s ‘lost’. This is different than spending time thinking but failing to produce any output.
The issue is not so much that reason and willpower need to be exercised, as that reason (time spent thinking) is lost if it isn’t spent immediately (the time passes with no insights). Since thinking produces insights that feed into future insights, spending time not thinking about anything is like… keeping money in an account that doesn’t generate interest.
I’m not getting the metaphor of “reason … is lost if isn’t spent immediately.” Do you mean something like “wasted” or “unproductive”? Can you say the same thing again in more words?
I think the confusion stems from a conflict between my definition in the article (reason is time spent thinking) and some of the more common, but less precise definitions (reason is the output of thinking time, or reason is the efficiency or effectiveness of thinking time).
Under the definition that reason is time spent thinking, if you don’t spend it by thinking about something, then that time wasn’t reason at all, so it’s ‘lost’. This is different than spending time thinking but failing to produce any output.