contra viv on akrasia

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According to LessWrong,

Akrasia is the state of acting against one's better judgment. A canonical example is procrastination.

In Akrasia is Fake and Not Real, Viv of slimes all the way down essentially argues that akrasia cannot be real because revealed preferences are real preferences. And since akrasia isn't real, you might as well stop trying to solve it and simply enjoy your life, concluding:

You probably shouldn’t do exactly what you want all of the time. But you also shouldn’t pretend to want things that you don’t. You will only confuse yourself.

Save yourself the emotional wheel-spinning. If you want it, you’ll soon have it. And if you have it—consider what that implies about your wants.

But "you probably shouldn't do exactly what you want all of the time" sure sounds like "akrasia exists, don't fall victim to it," so what gives?

please, can we define what "want" means

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Maybe we need to be clearer about what we mean by "want". In the original post, Viv says:

The string I most associate with the concept of akrasia is, “I want to, but ugh…”

I want to go to the gym, but ugh, I just don’t feel like it.

I want to have written this post, but ugh, that means I would have to write it.

I want to read more novels, but ugh, my phone is just much more engaging.

Get the fuck out of here. No you don’t.

From this, my understanding is that Viv is using the word "want" to mean something like "unconscious desire". A "want" is something that is immediately emotionally appealing.

The problem is that this misses a huge swath of want-like things that are relevant when talking about akrasia. People also use the word "want" to mean "my conscious thinks this is a good idea", which what they really mean when they say "I want to go to the gym, but ugh…"

But hey, I agree that it is anti-useful to try to collapse them down into one thing, so let's give them separate names:

Clearly, wants and meta-wants are not necessarily aligned. Akrasia, then, is the state when you find yourself unable to take action aligned with your meta-wants, because you are taking actions aligned with your wants instead.

This misalignment is a possibility Viv acknowledges:

[M]aybe you really want to eat nothing but Twinkies for every meal, but you’re diabetic and this will swiftly kill you. Definitely this is a problem.

In our want/meta-want framework: if you find yourself eating Twinkies (want) even though you don't want to eat Twinkies (meta-want, you'd rather not to die), then your actions are aligned with your wants rather than your meta-wants. We all agree that this is problematic.

That still sounds like "akrasia exists, watch out."

akrasia doesn't have to be about things you have to do

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Maybe I've read the title too literally, and I'm not placing Viv's actual stance properly. They do state that

Rationalists […] often write about akrasia as a problem of getting yourself to do stuff that you don’t want to do. I think that’s fine. Sometimes you have to do stuff that you don’t want to do, or else you get audited or fail your degree or all your teeth fall out. I myself have next to zero ability to do things I don’t want to do, so figuring out some way to want to do the things I need to is perfectly useful for me.

which makes it sound like they think the notion of overcoming akrasia is alright, as long as it's about doing things that you don't want to do, but have to anyway. My guess is that this should also apply to things you do want to do, but should not do (e.g., eat Twinkies, if you're diabetic).

I'm sympathetic to the idea that you shouldn't be making yourself do something unless you have a very good reason, but I don't think it makes sense to narrow the scope to this degree. There are many times when the thing you want to do is not at all aligned with what is good for you, even if there are no "have-to-dos" involved. Turning a blind eye to this leaves countless life improvements on the table.

Besides, I think it's a false dichotomy to assume that overcoming akrasia is mutually exclusive with doing what makes you happy. More often than not, overcoming akrasia is adjusting your environment to gently nudge you towards things you know makes you feel the best, which is not always the thing that you want the most in the moment.

Consider the phone-in-the-morning example:

Many mornings, I wake up and—like many people—immediately reach for my phone to get my fix of stupid internet bullshit, blasting my soft brain tissue with Content before I’ve even managed to slonk down my prescription amphetamine salts. […]

And given that I want to do this, and therefore I will do it, it is obviously preferable to do this while wholeheartedly enjoying it, instead of anxiously pretending not to want it in order to appease my inner Gestapo officer of socially acceptable desires.

Obviously, the world is not going to end whether you use your phone when you wake up or not, and I am all for telling the inner Gestapo officer to fuck off. You don't have to stop using your phone in the morning.

But personally, I have found that using my phone in the morning makes me feel unpleasantly frazzled afterward, regardless of how wholeheartedly I've enjoyed it. Despite the fact that I want to do it, my life is simply better when I do not use my phone in the morning. And yet the urge to do it is still there.

I may not be able to myself out of the wanting, but that doesn't mean that I have to consign myself to phone-in-the-morning every day. I can still try engineer my life to work better for me, the same way I try to engineer my life to get myself to do my taxes. Perhaps I'll put my phone charger far away from the bed or buy a physical alarm clock. This costs near nothing, but gives me a significantly better shot at starting the day with a clearer head, which I know makes me happier.

Maybe phone-in-the-morning doesn't frazzle you. But there are surely things that don't have to be done that would improve your life if they were done, and it is still useful to be able to work with your wants to those things a chance to happen. Watching out for akrasia helps you see where those improvements could be.

but maybe it's not really about whether akrasia exists or not

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Despite the title of the original post, I suspect that Viv is less concerned with whether or not akrasia exists, and more concerned with people being out of touch with their wants (though I am happy to be corrected if I have misunderstood).

For example, Viv says:

Do I “want” to still be going to the gym? Obviously not. Further—”should” I be going to the gym, given that I don’t want to, and that counterfactual uses of my time are clearly of more value to me? I contend that I should not.

Mutatis mutandi all the other stuff you “want” to do but seem to not pursue very ardently because of akrasia. Your PhD. Your unfinished novel. Your situationship.

This sounds much more like "people shouldn't always listen to their meta-wants", rather than "akrasia doesn't exist." On this, Viv and I are in total agreement.

In my experience, meta-wants are pretty likely to be bullshit—maybe it's a social expectation masquerading as something good for you, maybe it's something else. You can't take every one of them at face value and try to satisfy them all. Instead, you have to hold them up next to your real wants, the lizard-brain ones, and see which ones resonate and which ones don't.

And even though I'm pretty sure akrasia exists, I also think it is true that people are too concerned with whether they can use akrasia tactics to make themselves do things, rather than whether those things are the right things to do to begin with. If you're using akrasia tactics to make yourself live out a meta-want that doesn't resonate, you're doing it wrong.

As Viv puts it:

[…] what really grinds my gears is many people’s persistent delusion that they want things that they don’t actually want. It grinds my gears because it seems to cause so much unnecessary suffering.

Yes, Viv, it grinds my gears too.