I mostly agree, but there’s another criterion to consider: would the person feel better after following their conscious preferences, or after following their revealed preferences?
After I spend the whole afternoon lying in bed with my laptop idly browsing the Web/watching sitcoms/etc., I feel much, much worse than if I had noticed I was wasting my time, shut my laptop down, taken a nap, and then done something fulfilling. So, in that case, it’s my conscious preferences that are right. (This doesn’t happen that often now that I have LeechBlock installed.)
OTOH, when three days before an exam a friend of mine phoned me and said, “What are you doing tonight? Don’t tell me you’re staying home to study, ’cause I know that when you do that you end up spending all of the time on Facebook”, I didn’t answer “Yes, I’m staying home to study, and no, I’ve replaced my Facebook password with a random one and mailed it to myself in the future so I won’t be able to log in until then”, and I did go out with them; and three days later I aced the exam all the same (even in spite of this). So in that occasion, my revealed preferences were right, and following through with my plan to outsmart myself (i.e. staying home and study, with myself locked out of Facebook) would have been a net negative (i.e. I wouldn’t have done better at the exam, but I would have missed the night out).
ISTM that the former scenario (conscious and revealed preferences disagreeing, with the former being right) is waaay more common than the latter. Unless you go overboard with precommitment devices, as I’ve been doing lately!
I mostly agree, but there’s another criterion to consider: would the person feel better after following their conscious preferences, or after following their revealed preferences?
After I spend the whole afternoon lying in bed with my laptop idly browsing the Web/watching sitcoms/etc., I feel much, much worse than if I had noticed I was wasting my time, shut my laptop down, taken a nap, and then done something fulfilling. So, in that case, it’s my conscious preferences that are right. (This doesn’t happen that often now that I have LeechBlock installed.)
OTOH, when three days before an exam a friend of mine phoned me and said, “What are you doing tonight? Don’t tell me you’re staying home to study, ’cause I know that when you do that you end up spending all of the time on Facebook”, I didn’t answer “Yes, I’m staying home to study, and no, I’ve replaced my Facebook password with a random one and mailed it to myself in the future so I won’t be able to log in until then”, and I did go out with them; and three days later I aced the exam all the same (even in spite of this). So in that occasion, my revealed preferences were right, and following through with my plan to outsmart myself (i.e. staying home and study, with myself locked out of Facebook) would have been a net negative (i.e. I wouldn’t have done better at the exam, but I would have missed the night out).
ISTM that the former scenario (conscious and revealed preferences disagreeing, with the former being right) is waaay more common than the latter. Unless you go overboard with precommitment devices, as I’ve been doing lately!