Cross posting one of my tweet threads that people here might enjoy
A recent dilemma of mine: how to eat less sweet food but still have it in moderation? I don’t want to spend the willpower required to cut it out entirely, or to agonise every time about whether something is really worth it
My surprisingly elegant solution: Randomise! Have it with probability 2⁄3 (or probability of your choice) Abiding by the RNG is far easier than resisting temptation!
This is surprisingly general! Probabilistic dieting? Probabilistic vegetarianism? Half the moral benefits, far easier. Well, at least personally, I would find “toss a coin at each meal for whether to have meat” more than twice as easy as cutting it entirely.
I would also be very curious if this helps people cut back on drugs like alcohol/tobacco/etc.
You can also change the probability over time, eg if giving something up feels really hard, you can do it at 90% each day, and reduce that by 1% every day until it reaches 0 in 3 months.
Note: this doesn’t work if you can re-roll immediately after so you need restrictions on when you can pick a new random number—for snacks I can have any time I do one random pick a day, one a meal is also fine
I also recommend carrying dice around in your pocket, or having a random number generator on your watch or phone—makes this way easier to do whenever. Bonus points if you use a quantum RNG.
This is also very useful for analysis paralysis, eg what to eat for dinner or wear
I don’t want to spend the willpower required to cut it out entirely, or to agonise every time about whether something is really worth it
If you cut it out entirely, you get used to it, and no longer need a lot of willpower after a while. Though it’s probably less realistic to cut out sugar entirely than to quit some drug entirely.
Your experience may vary but I’ve done 12-week weight loss cycles where I ate no sweets and I never lost my desire to eat sweets. I’m on week 6 of a 6-week weight loss cycle right now, I had pretty strong cravings on week 2–3 and they significantly subsided by week 4 but they’re still there.
I do still eat fruit, which may be enough to maintain my sugar cravings, but if your goal is to improve health then I think it’s a bad idea to cut out fruit. And anyway I don’t get cravings for fruit, I get cravings for artificially-sweetened foods.
I’ve heard at least one person report that they entirely lost their sugar cravings when they stopped eating sugar. So it works for some people it just doesn’t work for me.
Oh, that’s disappointing. I once got rid of my craving for sweet drinks just by completely quitting drinks with sugar and sweeteners for a while. Unfortunately I since had a relapse. It’s easy to get addicted again, especially when another drug is involved, as in energy drinks. The randomization (gamification?) approach may work better in some cases.
If you cut something out entirely, that’s hard at first, but basically free later, when you became unaddicted. Just reducing consumption to medium level probably doesn’t cause you to get unaddicted in this way, so this requires some degree of long-term willpower. I assume this is why alcoholics try to stay completely “dry”, not just reduce their consumption.
I do this often, inspired by the novel “The Dice Man”. helps break inner conflicts in what feels like a fair, fully endorsed way. @Richard_Ngo has a theory that this “random dictatorship” model of decision making has uniquely good properties as a fallback when negotiation fails / is too expensive & why active inference involves probabilistic distributions over goal state not atomic goal states.
I was about to try this, but then realized the Internal Double Crux was a better tool for my specific dilemma. I guess here’s a reminder to everyone that IDC exists.
My suggestion: use every meal as a reward for something.
Here is an excerpt from an old piece of mine, not very LessWrongish, but you may find some ideas interesting:
The Theoretical Discussion section looks into the causes of the obesity problem and expands its scope to a more general topic of addictions. Its first subsection, Hunger Recognition entertains the idea that the availability of digestion capacity may get mistaken for real hunger. Overeating is not the only bad habit that people struggle to overcome. Studying the similarities and differences among various bad habits and addictions helps us better understand their nature and fight them. Decision Fatigue subsection opens discussion on habits. Priority Bias digs into causes of poor decisions, and Commitment with Mindfulness talks about sustainable solutions.
Cross posting one of my tweet threads that people here might enjoy
A recent dilemma of mine: how to eat less sweet food but still have it in moderation? I don’t want to spend the willpower required to cut it out entirely, or to agonise every time about whether something is really worth it
My surprisingly elegant solution: Randomise! Have it with probability 2⁄3 (or probability of your choice) Abiding by the RNG is far easier than resisting temptation!
This is surprisingly general! Probabilistic dieting? Probabilistic vegetarianism? Half the moral benefits, far easier. Well, at least personally, I would find “toss a coin at each meal for whether to have meat” more than twice as easy as cutting it entirely.
I would also be very curious if this helps people cut back on drugs like alcohol/tobacco/etc.
You can also change the probability over time, eg if giving something up feels really hard, you can do it at 90% each day, and reduce that by 1% every day until it reaches 0 in 3 months.
Note: this doesn’t work if you can re-roll immediately after so you need restrictions on when you can pick a new random number—for snacks I can have any time I do one random pick a day, one a meal is also fine
I also recommend carrying dice around in your pocket, or having a random number generator on your watch or phone—makes this way easier to do whenever. Bonus points if you use a quantum RNG.
This is also very useful for analysis paralysis, eg what to eat for dinner or wear
That’s sounds like an interesting trick. However:
If you cut it out entirely, you get used to it, and no longer need a lot of willpower after a while. Though it’s probably less realistic to cut out sugar entirely than to quit some drug entirely.
Your experience may vary but I’ve done 12-week weight loss cycles where I ate no sweets and I never lost my desire to eat sweets. I’m on week 6 of a 6-week weight loss cycle right now, I had pretty strong cravings on week 2–3 and they significantly subsided by week 4 but they’re still there.
I do still eat fruit, which may be enough to maintain my sugar cravings, but if your goal is to improve health then I think it’s a bad idea to cut out fruit. And anyway I don’t get cravings for fruit, I get cravings for artificially-sweetened foods.
I’ve heard at least one person report that they entirely lost their sugar cravings when they stopped eating sugar. So it works for some people it just doesn’t work for me.
Oh, that’s disappointing. I once got rid of my craving for sweet drinks just by completely quitting drinks with sugar and sweeteners for a while. Unfortunately I since had a relapse. It’s easy to get addicted again, especially when another drug is involved, as in energy drinks. The randomization (gamification?) approach may work better in some cases.
Sure. I don’t want to spend the medium term willpower required to cut it out entirely either
If you cut something out entirely, that’s hard at first, but basically free later, when you became unaddicted. Just reducing consumption to medium level probably doesn’t cause you to get unaddicted in this way, so this requires some degree of long-term willpower. I assume this is why alcoholics try to stay completely “dry”, not just reduce their consumption.
I do this often, inspired by the novel “The Dice Man”. helps break inner conflicts in what feels like a fair, fully endorsed way. @Richard_Ngo has a theory that this “random dictatorship” model of decision making has uniquely good properties as a fallback when negotiation fails / is too expensive & why active inference involves probabilistic distributions over goal state not atomic goal states.
I was about to try this, but then realized the Internal Double Crux was a better tool for my specific dilemma. I guess here’s a reminder to everyone that IDC exists.
My suggestion: use every meal as a reward for something.
Here is an excerpt from an old piece of mine, not very LessWrongish, but you may find some ideas interesting: