Is Ra­tion­al­ist Self-Im­prove­ment Real?

Hu­mans Are Embed­ded Agents Too

Akra­sia Tac­tics Review

Akra­sia, hy­per­bolic dis­count­ing, and picoeconomics

Akra­sia and Shangri-La

Akra­sia is con­fu­sion about what you want

Akra­sia Tac­tics Re­view 2: The Akra­sia Strikes Back

Akra­sia Tac­tics Re­view 3: The Re­turn of the Akrasia

Akra­sia sur­vey data analysis

Akra­sia hack survey

Akra­sia and Im­mu­nity to change

Akra­sia as a col­lec­tive ac­tion problem

Subagents, akra­sia, and co­her­ence in humans

Anti-akra­sia tool: like stickK.com for data nerds

Anti-Akra­sia Tech­nique: Struc­tured Procrastination

Anti-akra­sia re­mote mon­i­tor­ing experiment

An akra­sia case study

Anti-Akra­sia Tac­tics Discussion

Over­com­ing Akra­sia/​Pro­cras­ti­na­tion—Vol­un­teers Wanted

Kick­ing Akra­sia: Now or Never

• Qiaochu_Yuan 20 Jan 2018 0:18 UTC

  33 points

  on: Fash­ion­able or Fun­da­men­tal Thought in Communities

  Akra­sia is a so­cially con­ve­nient nar­ra­tive: “I, the real me I iden­tify with, wanted to do this thing, but some mys­te­ri­ous thing, which is not the real me and which I don’t iden­tify with, pre­vented me from do­ing it.” One way of de­scribing what’s hap­pen­ing is that you’re iden­ti­fy­ing with your Sys­tem 2 and dis­tanc­ing your­self from your Sys­tem 1 so you can lay the blame on it.

  But your Sys­tem 1 is where your mo­ti­va­tion comes from, es­pe­cially your deep­est mo­ti­va­tion; it’s where you love from, it’s where you defend your loved ones from, etc. It is you, not just a sub­sys­tem of you that you have to wran­gle. You are the elephant too, not just the rider.

  So you don’t “have akra­sia,” you didn’t want to do the thing, and there’s some so­cial /​ psy­cholog­i­cal weird­ness around ad­mit­ting that fact to your­self or oth­ers. You can fur­ther try to figure out why you didn’t want to do it and whether you could want to do it later, but that’s sec­ondary to just ad­mit­ting to your­self that you didn’t want to do the thing.

• DanielLC 27 Apr 2011 21:50 UTC

  17 points

  on: Mun­dane Magic

  • Akrasia

  Suffer­ers do things de­spite think­ing they’re bad de­ci­sions. They tend to be things that bring small amounts of hap­piness in the short term, but other times they seem to do noth­ing more than alle­vi­ate bore­dom. Some ex­am­ples are sim­ple games, and clas­sify­ing liter­ary de­vices. It’s not un­com­mon for the vic­tims to spend most of their lives on un­pro­duc­tive things.

  • Antipleasure

  An­tiplea­sure is a rare dis­ease in which a vic­tim’s hap­piness is so low that they would pre­fer the events not have hap­pened in the first place. Not sim­ply that it’s re­placed with an av­er­age event, but re­moved al­to­gether. It can be short but pow­er­ful, com­monly trig­gered by phys­i­cal dam­age, long and weak, gen­er­ally trig­gered by psy­cholog­i­cal is­sues, or in rare cases, long and pow­er­ful, trig­gered by such things as kid­ney stones and jel­lyfish venom. In ex­treme cases, suffer­ers have been known to take their own lives.

  • In­her­ent Limit

  This af­flic­tion causes the vic­tims to at­ro­phy. The dam­age gets more ex­treme, even­tu­ally lead­ing to death. No vic­tim has ever sur­vived longer than 122 years.

  • Inevitable Cessation

  Peo­ple af­flicted with this syn­drome can gen­er­ally heal from small wounds, but large enough wounds, along with sev­eral other pos­si­bil­ities, lead to them de­grad­ing into in­ert mat­ter. The vic­tims go to great lengths to post­pone this uni­mag­in­ably hor­rific fate, but it’s be­lieved to be im­pos­si­ble to pre­vent com­pletely.

• wedrifid 6 Aug 2010 16:42 UTC

  11 points

  on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 2

  Akra­sia cure: Self-cast the im­perius curse.

• RichardChappell 30 Mar 2009 21:38 UTC

  10 points

  on: Akra­sia, hy­per­bolic dis­count­ing, and picoeconomics

  Akra­sia is the ten­dency to act against your own long-term in­ter­ests

  No, akra­sia is act­ing against your bet­ter judg­ment. This comes apart from im­pru­dence in both di­rec­tions: (i) some­one may be non-akrat­i­cally im­pru­dent, if they whole-heart­edly en­dorse be­ing bi­ased to­wards the near; (ii) we may be akratic by failing to act ac­cord­ing to other norms (be­sides pru­dence) that we re­flec­tively en­dorse, e.g. moral­ity.

• Eliezer Yudkowsky 1 Jan 2010 20:37 UTC

  8 points

  on: Open Thread: Jan­uary 2010

  Akra­sia FYI:

  I tried cre­at­ing a sep­a­rate lo­gin on my com­puter with no dis­trac­tions, and tried to get my work done there. This re­duced my pro­duc­tivity be­cause it in­creased the cost of switch­ing back from pro­cras­ti­nat­ing to work­ing. I would have thought that re­cov­er­ing in large bites and work­ing in large bites would have been more effi­cient, but ap­par­ently no, it’s not.

  I’m cur­rently test­ing the hy­poth­e­sis that read­ing fic­tion (pos­si­bly read­ing any­thing?) comes out of my en­ergy-to-work-on-the-book bud­get.

  Next up to try: Pick up a CPAP ma­chine off Craigslist.

• ThereIsNoJustice 19 Mar 2013 19:58 UTC

  7 points

  on: Open thread, March 17-31, 2013

  Akra­sia-re­lated but not yet on less­wrong. Per­haps some­one will in­cor­po­rate these in the next akra­sia round-up:

  1) Fogg model of be­hav­ior. Fogg’s meth­ods beat akra­sia be­cause he avoids deal­ing with mo­ti­va­tion. Like “ex­e­cute by de­fault”, you sim­ply make a habit by tack­ing some very easy to perform task onto some­thing you already do. Here is a slide­share that ex­plains his “tiny habits” and an on­line, guided walk­through course. When I took the course, I did the ac­tions each day, and usu­ally more than those ac­tions. (IE ev­ery time I sat down, I plugged in my draw­ing tablet, which got me do­ing digi­tal art ba­si­cally au­to­mat­i­cally un­less I could think of some­thing much more im­por­tant to do). For those who don’t want to click through, here are ex­am­ple “tiny habits” which over time can be­come larger habits: “After I brush, I will floss one tooth.” “After I start the dish­washer, I will read one sen­tence from a book.” “After I walk in my door from work, I will get out my work­out clothes.” “After I sit down on the train, I will open my sketch note­book.” “After I put my head on the pillow, I will think of one good thing from my day.” “After I ar­rive home, I will hang my keys up by the door.”

  2) The Prac­tic­ing Mind. The au­thor con­fronts the rel­a­tively mun­dane na­ture of most pro­duc­tive hu­man ac­tivity. He works on pi­anos for a liv­ing, do­ing some of the most repet­i­tive work imag­in­able. As he says: “out of sheer sur­vival, I be­gan to de­velop an abil­ity to get lost in the pro­cess of do­ing some­thing.” In gen­eral, I think the book de­tails the way a per­son ought to ap­proach work: be­ing “pre­sent” with the work, fo­cused on the pro­cess and not the product, be­ing eval­u­a­tive and not judg­men­tal about work, to not try too hard but in­stead let your­self work.

  I’ll share one con­crete sug­ges­tion. Work slowly. “[S]low­ness… is a para­dox. What I mean by slow is that you work at a pace that a

• ialdabaoth 24 Oct 2012 3:21 UTC

  6 points

  on: My Child­hood Death Spiral

  Akra­sia doesn’t be­gin to de­scribe the prob­lem. I’m go­ing to quote a line from HPMoR that res­onated strongly with me:

  “You could call it heroic re­spon­si­bil­ity, maybe,” Harry Pot­ter said. “Not like the usual sort. It means that what­ever hap­pens, no mat­ter what, it’s always your fault. Even if you tell Pro­fes­sor McGon­a­gall, she’s not re­spon­si­ble for what hap­pens, you are. Fol­low­ing the school rules isn’t an ex­cuse, some­one else be­ing in charge isn’t an ex­cuse, even try­ing your best isn’t an ex­cuse. There just aren’t any ex­cuses, you’ve got to get the job done no mat­ter what.”

  I get heroic re­spon­si­bil­ity. I’ve felt it in my gut since I was five. When I was 13, and it fi­nally dawned on me that ev­ery­one around me was mis­er­able and ter­rified and an­gry be­cause the God they were pray­ing to wasn’t listen­ing, my im­me­di­ate re­s­olu­tion was to aban­don wor­ship­ping him, and at­tempt to be­come a bet­ter God my­self.

  But, some of us aren’t as smart as oth­ers, or as charis­matic, or as willful, or as phys­i­cally or men­tally strong or re­silient. We hear the call, but we don’t have what it takes to an­swer it prop­erly.

  And that’s our fault, too.

  And we can’t just stop listen­ing. Not know­ing that peo­ple need sav­ing isn’t any more of an ex­cuse than not be­ing strong enough to save them. Re-wiring your mind to not feel the crush­ing need to save them is ALSO a cop-out.

  So… yeah. And lest any­one think I’m try­ing to be self-con­grat­u­la­tory here about my “su­pe­rior moral­ity”, please un­der­stand that I am most as­suredly not do­ing it right—this is a bug, not a fea­ture.

• thelittledoctor 21 Dec 2011 5:37 UTC

  6 points

  on: What is your ra­tio­nal­ity blind spot?

  Akra­sia, pure and sim­ple. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is my fiercest foe.

• MrHen 29 Apr 2009 18:19 UTC

  5 points

  on: Fight­ing Akra­sia: In­cen­tivis­ing Action

  Akra­sia can strike any­where, but one place it doesn’t seem to strike too of­ten or too sev­erly, as­sum­ing you are em­ployed, is in the work place. You may not want to do some­thing, and it might take con­sid­er­able willpower to perform a task, but un­less you want to get fired you can’t always play Soli­taire.

  Akra­sia struck all the time back when I was work­ing at (gasp!) Burger King. There were em­ploy­ees and man­agers that would fol­low this be­hav­ior. “Well, I should do this be­cause it is what my em­ployer wants, but...” The trick is to do as lit­tle as pos­si­ble with­out get­ting fired. Ly­ing helps.

  This is the biggest is­sue I have with some of the pun­ish­ment/​penalty sys­tems sug­gested in the com­ments is that they teach peo­ple not to get caught in­stead of do­ing what­ever it was they were sup­posed to be done. The clock Ali­corn linked to is a minor ex­am­ple, but the workaround is to turn the clock off and sleep any­way. Most pun­ish­ment sys­tems have similar prob­lems.

• roland 12 Nov 2009 21:30 UTC

  5 points

  on: Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yud­kowsky: Ask Your Questions

  Akra­sia

  Eliezer, you men­tioned suffer­ing from writer’s mo­lasses and your solu­tion was to write daily on ob/​lw. I con­sider this a clever and suc­cess­ful over­com­ing of akra­sia. What other suc­cess sto­ries from your life in re­la­tion to akra­sia could you share?

• CAE_Jones 26 May 2015 15:20 UTC

  5 points

  on: Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015

  (Akra­sia, be­cause that’s all I ever talk about):

  I do not know to whose at­ten­tion I should bring this so as to com­bat the prob­lem, so I’m ask­ing here:

  http://​​cae­jones.live­jour­nal.com/​​18117.html

  I have a stupidly difficult time talk­ing to peo­ple, too, es­pe­cially my par­ents (who pretty much have to man­age all the de­tails, be­cause of course they do). This does not help.

  Yes, I’ve read all the Akra­sia ar­ti­cles on Less­wrong that I can find. Mostly, I’m hop­ing there’s some­one bet­ter equipped to fix this than me or the in­ter­net, and that some­one can help me find that en­tity and ex­tract a solu­tion from them.

  (But if that some­one hap­pens to post the solu­tion here, first, that’d be nice. Although turn­ing it into an ar­du­ous quest through the tem­ple of doom seems like it could only help, as­sum­ing no crip­pling in­juries along the way.)

• Alicorn 1 Jan 2011 23:13 UTC

  4 points

  on: Pro­posal: Anti-Akra­sia Alliance

  Akrasi­acs

  “Akrat­ics”, I think.

• NancyLebovitz 25 Mar 2011 14:48 UTC

  4 points

  on: Con­stantly ask what you’re cur­rently do­ing that is irrational

  Akra­sia is a big topic here be­cause it seems to be a com­mon prob­lem. How­ever, ex­ces­sive im­pul­sive­ness can also be a prob­lem.

  It’s pos­si­ble to think of im­pul­sive­ness as a sort of akra­sia—it’s ha­bit­u­ally in­suffi­cient effort put into self-reg­u­la­tion. How­ever, do­ing some­thing with­out thought has a differ­ent feel than low-en­ergy time-kil­ling, and prob­a­bly re­quires a some­what differ­ent ap­proach to deal with it.

  And there are sorts of ir­ra­tional­ity which aren’t very much like ei­ther. There’s lost goals, and there’s in­suffi­cient re­search—do­ing some­thing be­cause you’d heard some­where that it was a good idea with­out check­ing on how well-founded the the­ory was or whether your life is get­ting im­proved.

  I have no rea­son to think this is a com­plete ty­pol­ogy.

• Viliam 4 May 2017 15:13 UTC

  4 points

  on: There is No Akrasia

  Akra­sia is an ap­plause light.

  Or per­haps a fake ex­pla­na­tion or a mys­te­ri­ous an­swer.

  “Why am I not do­ing X?”
  “Be­cause you suffer from the not-do­ing-the-thing syn­drome, which peo­ple ed­u­cated in Latin call ‘akra­sia’.”
  “Thank you, Cap­tain Ob­vi­ous, you solved my prob­lem!”
  “Ac­tu­ally, I am a Cap­tain Knows-One-Latin-Word, but you are wel­come!”

• CronoDAS 8 Jul 2012 21:24 UTC

  3 points

  on: Mo­ral­ity open thread

  Akra­sia is get­ting stuck in a lo­cal op­ti­mum. It’s more pleas­ant to spend the next in­stant sur­fing the in­ter­net than writ­ing your pa­per, so that’s what many sim­ple op­ti­miz­ing al­gorithms (such as a hill-climb­ing al­gorithm) will end up do­ing, rather than “dis­cover” that hav­ing finished the pa­per will be even bet­ter.

• [deleted] 17 Nov 2011 15:58 UTC

  3 points

  on: The curse of identity

  Akra­sia has been talked about a lot, with lit­tle progress. This ap­proach doesn’t seem use­ful, maybe be­cause it’s solv­ing the wrong prob­lem. You are right about my com­ment be­ing too gen­eral, though, and I re­tract the claim as stated.

• ChristianKl 3 May 2020 21:06 UTC

  2 points

  on: Stop say­ing wrong things

  Akra­sia is already a huge prob­lem for a lot of ra­tio­nal­ists. If you in­crease the filter for which ac­tions can be taken you are likely get less ac­tions tak­ing in gen­eral and might re­in­force already ex­ist­ing akra­sia.

• NancyLebovitz 4 Oct 2013 15:34 UTC

  2 points

  on: Fix­ing akra­sia: damna­tion to acausal hell

  Akra­sia might just be a symp­tom of de­pres­sion rather than some­thing more com­plex.

• Vladimir_Nesov 17 Nov 2011 16:06 UTC

  1 point

  on: The curse of identity

  Akra­sia has been talked about a lot, with lit­tle progress.

  Agreed that this strongly ar­gues against think­ing up new amaz­ing solu­tions just to put them in com­ments to the post. (“Hold off on propos­ing solu­tions” seems usu­ally mi­sused. An in­junc­tion closer to the pre­sent topic is Be­ware of Other-Op­ti­miz­ing.)

• Multiheaded 19 Mar 2012 22:48 UTC

  1 point

  on: I’ve had it with those dark ru­mours about our cul­ture rigor­ously sup­press­ing opinions

  Akra­sia’s a big prob­lem for me.

  Me too, but I’d hate, hate, hate some­one run­ning my life be­yond the ba­sic (friendly) pres­sure to study and give a helping hand that my par­ents put on me, so I’d con­sider it hyp­o­crit­i­cal to sup­port a sys­tem of di­rect co­er­cion in so­ciety, like the ap­pren­tice­ship in me­dieval guilds.

  Of course it’s a shame if peo­ple, through mis­takes or de­mo­ti­va­tion, can’t set foot upon a path con­tribu­tive to so­ciety, but I con­sider it to be be­neath the mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion to just drag peo­ple to where some ex­pert wants them to be. There should be some kind of pos­i­tive stim­u­lus for ev­ery­one that’s si­mul­ta­neously not turn­ing things into a ruth­less mer­i­to­cratic race (e.g. the gov­ern­ment coax­ing some perfor­mance out of un­mo­ti­vated young peo­ple with harm­less drugs in­stead of the ca­reer and sta­tus they don’t care about would still be un­eth­i­cal at the core).

  That’s one of the rea­sons why I’m so at­tracted to So­cial­ist thought; it has wres­tled long and hard with the prob­lem of mo­ti­va­tion, al­though it has pro­duced noth­ing solid but var­i­ous crit­i­cism of the ex­ist­ing solu­tions.

  a more au­thor­i­tar­ian par­ent who set goals and bound­aries and so on

  It’s very un­der­stand­able that you don’t want to dis­close pri­vate things, but this sen­tence tells noth­ing. What kinds of “goals” or “bound­aries” would you con­sider ac­cept­able, and from whom? (If the an­swers are like “Don’t smoke weed while you live with your par­ents if they or­der you not to, al­though it shouldn’t con­cern the gov­ern­ment”, then your view is ut­terly main­stream, of course. If it’s “Par­ents can for­bid you to look at any porn un­til you’re 18 just be­cause it’s in the law”, then I dis­agree. Sex­ual ex­cite­ment is a ba­sic hu­man need while drugs aren’t. Although some per­son­al­ity types DO seem to need an ad­dic­tion, maybe for an ad­di­tional re­ward struc­ture in their life, more than oth­ers. Mine is INFP by the way, what’s yours?)

  EDIT: Dear down­voter, please cut this out. If you re­ally, re­ally want to pun­ish me for “f