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Breakdown of Will
Ainslie argues that our responses to the threat of our own inconsistency determine the basic fabric of human culture. He suggests that individuals are more like populations of bargaining agents than like the hierarchical command structures envisaged by cognitive psychologists. This perspective helps us understand so much that is puzzling in human action and interaction: from self-defeating behaviors to willfulness, from pathological over-control and self-deception to subtler forms of behavior such as altruism, sadism, gambling, and the "social construction" of belief.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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January 21, 2018
I wonder sometimes if a sufficiently advanced art critic may by the cover of a book determine its contents, which would be all the more impressive if the cover were in no way inspired by material it covered. Fortunately, our task is not so difficult. From an ocean of violet smoke is inscribed a glowing rectangle with sharp boundaries, framing a portrait of, presumably, our beloved psychologist in his younger days. His mouth is open and his teeth are faintly clenched. He stares at us, brow furrowed, with a sense of horrified bewilderment.
But the real key lies in the portrait's composition. It seems like it began as a photograph, then a computer generated a pointillist grid of equally sized squares within which grayscale circles of varying radius arrange themselves to give—when viewed as a whole—an impression of the original photo. Ainslie’s thesis, of course, is that while the experience of being a self may feel like one phenomenological unity, it may be no more than a sort of Schelling point or BATNA, if you prefer, for the endless series of competing interests of which the mind actually consists. In the neurological Congress, the prize of attention may be awarded at one moment to the Smoking party and to the Diet party the next, with none having the power to override the intermittent filibusters of the insufferable Pain party.
But Ainslie’s hyperbolic discounting model has far greater ambitions than illuminating the recursive mechanics of reification. It wishes to reconcile the grand questions of philosophy. Of fate and free will, of reason and emotion, of logical positivism and social constructionism. Here is a juxtaposition by which I cannot help but be struck: the self-assurance of the text’s academic quietude and the mighty pillars of paradox it purports to destroy. Curiosity impels one to ask now whether it succeeds, and if so, how, and to what extent, but I will not steal Ainslie’s thunder nor butcher his words. I will simply state that the general argument is worthwhile if only for its originality, or barring that, its daring; judge for yourself if he pulls himself from the cliff.
Favorite quotes
“In modalities where an organism can mentally reward itself, surprise is the only commodity that can be scarce.” [p.170]
“Attuned as we are to modern efficiency in the developed world, we don’t recognize the oppressiveness of an environment so rationalized that much of our natural idiosyncrasy has been anticipated and either harnessed or selected out.” [p.159-160]
“People can learn to get hungry just when food is available, for instance at mealtimes. When food is never available, that is, under starvation conditions, people learn to avoid generating appetite entirely.” [p.68]
“Ulysses planning for the Sirens must treat Ulysses hearing them as a separate person, to be influenced if possible and forestalled if not.” [p.40]
“[J]ust as with species of animals, there are surroundings where an interest is able to attack a competing interest and other surroundings where it’s vulnerable to attack.” [p.62]
“Indeed, a major factor in the decay of civilizations that have been peaceful for long periods may be the replacement of indirect processes by efficient ones; as they become efficient, they become unaccountably less rewarding.” [p.196]
“While science stands by, mystified, people keep wrecking their own lives.” [p.28]
But the real key lies in the portrait's composition. It seems like it began as a photograph, then a computer generated a pointillist grid of equally sized squares within which grayscale circles of varying radius arrange themselves to give—when viewed as a whole—an impression of the original photo. Ainslie’s thesis, of course, is that while the experience of being a self may feel like one phenomenological unity, it may be no more than a sort of Schelling point or BATNA, if you prefer, for the endless series of competing interests of which the mind actually consists. In the neurological Congress, the prize of attention may be awarded at one moment to the Smoking party and to the Diet party the next, with none having the power to override the intermittent filibusters of the insufferable Pain party.
Research has shown that even while we’re asleep, our behavior can be shaped by differential comfort. Thus our behaviors can grow to obtain reward without the well-scrutinized process we call “volition.” [p.60]We sputter about this world in total unawareness of the vicious war being at all times waged by the ecosystems of miniscule homunculi deciding what we desire, how we’ll act, who we are, the slightest shift in sleeping position amounting no less than to a Darwinian annihilation of the impulses proposing that in fact shifting your foot one centimeter right might feel better, too faint to have their fuss heard. Even the very patterns of our thoughts are calculated according to the logic of the market, with this or that approach going to the highest bidder, who not only wins the way we think but in so doing amplifies the utility we get from that pattern, in that circumstance—carving, as I like to say, the desire paths of the soul.
But Ainslie’s hyperbolic discounting model has far greater ambitions than illuminating the recursive mechanics of reification. It wishes to reconcile the grand questions of philosophy. Of fate and free will, of reason and emotion, of logical positivism and social constructionism. Here is a juxtaposition by which I cannot help but be struck: the self-assurance of the text’s academic quietude and the mighty pillars of paradox it purports to destroy. Curiosity impels one to ask now whether it succeeds, and if so, how, and to what extent, but I will not steal Ainslie’s thunder nor butcher his words. I will simply state that the general argument is worthwhile if only for its originality, or barring that, its daring; judge for yourself if he pulls himself from the cliff.
Intending is the classification of an act as a precedent for a series of similar acts, so that the person stakes the prospective value of this series – perhaps, in the extreme, the value of all the fruits of all intentions whatsoever – on performing the intended action in the case at hand. [p.127]I refuse to believe anyone who has so much as a passing interest in such volumes picks them up hoping, explicitly or subliminally, to change or improve how their minds work or, perhaps more accurately, how they act in the world, after digesting the information wherein contained. Still are we lured by such prospects though we may have long ago and through extensive experience concluded their materialization to be fantasy. But in the spirit of the original hope, I propose an avenue of practice; Ainslie identifies the salience of short-range interests and the possibility of their categorization through the rational Will. The ideal is then to maintain a state of awareness within which one can identify when these short-range interests pop up and code them as such in order to develop a distaste or disdain for the feeling, thus over time weakening their grip as a category. To all those capable of such feats, kudos; reality looks a little different. Reality is when you check Facebook or Twitter and hate yourself for falling prey to their wiles yet again even though you know the nature of the beast already, like a fencing match where your opponent is so kind to tell you exactly where he’s going to strike before he lunges and you can try your best to dodge or parry but he gets you every time because he’s just that much more skilled and what can you do but get hit. If that analogy was too flat then one might say you dig the dopamine hit just that much more than you dislike the resulting self-disgust and so are willing to pay the latter as price for the former. “Subpar local maxima,” as others might say.
A quick mind can put together rules in any number of ways, so finding evasions is also easy. [p.86]In the final analysis, Ainslie’s theory is an economics of the unconscious. This is remarkable because this shadow realm has remained, to the best of my knowledge, impenetrable to the modern standards of empiricism. Thus it is infinitely curious how Ainslie managed to piece his theory together. Has he always possessed some strong internal sense of split selves which he only now finally managed to rationalize into coherence? One can only suppose. But regardless, I see in picoeconomics the possibility of a science, which is more than can be said of all the psychoanalytic speculation of the last century, however descriptively accurate it can in some cases be.
Favorite quotes
“In modalities where an organism can mentally reward itself, surprise is the only commodity that can be scarce.” [p.170]
“Attuned as we are to modern efficiency in the developed world, we don’t recognize the oppressiveness of an environment so rationalized that much of our natural idiosyncrasy has been anticipated and either harnessed or selected out.” [p.159-160]
“People can learn to get hungry just when food is available, for instance at mealtimes. When food is never available, that is, under starvation conditions, people learn to avoid generating appetite entirely.” [p.68]
“Ulysses planning for the Sirens must treat Ulysses hearing them as a separate person, to be influenced if possible and forestalled if not.” [p.40]
“[J]ust as with species of animals, there are surroundings where an interest is able to attack a competing interest and other surroundings where it’s vulnerable to attack.” [p.62]
“Indeed, a major factor in the decay of civilizations that have been peaceful for long periods may be the replacement of indirect processes by efficient ones; as they become efficient, they become unaccountably less rewarding.” [p.196]
“While science stands by, mystified, people keep wrecking their own lives.” [p.28]
June 9, 2019
Packed with insight into the human condition. The phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting and the concept of intertemporal bargaining have enormous explanatory power, which Ainslie leverages effectively and concisely to obtain insights into psychological phenomena including willpower, pain, legalism, and empathy.
March 7, 2020
A textbook-type deconstruction of the role of will, or willpower, in our decision-making processes. More specifically, whether one’s will can circumvent self-destructive behaviors. I won’t give away the punchline, but will suggest that an appropriate add-on to this book might be “Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick“ by Wendy Wood. I’ve not read it yet, but plan on doing so soon!
September 4, 2022
Me = Tantalos. Intuitive translation of this book = Grapes.
Notes
Exponential discounting x * y% is far more forgiving than hyperbolic discounting x/y.
Pain has to compete for dominance in the marketplace just like pleasure - audio analgesia (listening to music makes dental procedure less painful) and hypnotic focus (convert painful stimulus into non-emotional stimulus like sun warming the skin).
Addiction rapidly cycled is itch. Itch rapidly cycled is pain.
Just like itch eventually ‘opens the floodgates’ to our reactions, pain similarly, except much faster and more instinctive, except when trained by a pain management course to see it as a judgment call.
Other experiences with similar motivation profile as pain: panic attacks, traumatic flashbacks, shivering in the cold - needs focused attention to stop.
In utility theory, reward (any experience that causes repetition of preceding behavior) and pleasure (any experience you perceive as desirable) are the same. In hyperbolic discounting, there is a split - brief reward (itching) create irresistible urges.
Pattern of pain and other aversive emotions like panic - vivid sensation + no-pleasure.
‘Drawn’ towards negative behavior (panic, grief etc), not pushed, so it is in some sense rewarding (but not pleasurable).
Competition among incompatible reward-seeking interests like species of animals in an ecosystem. Each have niches where they win.
Appetites vs Emotions vs Hungers. Appetite is a preliminary stage for a consumption module, hunger for food, anxiety for pain etc. Emotions have only preliminary stage, like grief/joy.
Emotions and motivations both move us to behavior, but former, like ‘hill’ in topography is an identifiable feature against a less prominent background, made of the same stuff.
Appetites selected to make the reward subjectively better, or the appetite itself rewarding. Stimuli provoking appetite are occasions selected to make appetite more rewarding. Hence we feel hungry just as food is ready etc.
4 strategies against will-breakdown: 1) extrapsychic commitment - disulferimide that makes alcohol nauseous, pill that reduces appetite, new year resolutions; 2) control of attention - suppress (consciously ignore urge), repress (unconsciously act in direction of ignoring urge), denial (ignore result of urge); 3) preparation of emotion - hunt beast with beast; Personal rules - self control comes from choosing patterns of behavior over time, thus a self-enforcing contract where every instance increases expectation of sticking to it.
Sophisticated bargaining: 1) different selves are in prisoner’s dilemma, while current-self cannot be punished by future-self, hurts cooperation/trust; 2) loophole of defecting this once while cooperating in general (exceptions) fixed by bright lines, with ego-function learned by how they improve intertemporal cooperation.
Ego not an organ, but a network server, a broker of cooperation.
Conceiving the stake of a personal side-bet as a patron-saint/god X who gives me strength to continue behavior x, or is offended when I give in to temptation.
Philosophers on Will: 1) Kavka problem - get paid if you intend to drink noxious (harmmless) liquid, even before actually drinking it, don’t need to go ahead. Incentive not to renege so as to maintain credibility of will to oneself 2) Free Will - intertemporal bargaining mediates gap between free will (choice is unknowable) and determinism (choice is not consciously known) if each successive prediction has an impact on choice (chaos) 3) Newcomb’’s problem - Predestination and impact on downstream choice.
Max Weber on paradox of how calvinist predestination increased self-control.
James-Lange theory of emotion - Person isn’t emitting a simple behavior, anger for instance, instead an emotion, followed by series of predictions about apparent strength of emotion being controllable, so repressing emotion softens the emotion.
Muscle behavior’s recursion: readiness potential in brain precedes awareness of intention to move, which in turn precedes movement by long enough to abort (ie, voluntary). Instigation - perception - self-prediction.
Indians of Great Plains had no word for will/willpower, but there motives are averaged not across time but across people - openness to social influence
Even Lawrence Kohlberg’s research that put categorical imperative on top (6th level) vs social influence only Level 2, saw girls ‘arrest’ at level 2 while males ‘progressed’ to 6. Males with iron-will needed for protection, competition, while women’s social art assuaged side effects of men - rigidity, inhibition, isolation to form symbiotic pair.
Premature satiation is limiting factor for emotional reward - 1) freely available reward available by value and duration of appetite. 2) hyperbolic discounting makes you impatient to reach peak consumption, premature satiation. 3) familiarity of sequence of events alone will dissipate appetite, needing surprise. 4) premature satiation weeds out emotions that are too frequent and controlled.
In modalities where an organism can mentally reward itself, surprise is the only commodity that can be scarce.
To repeat once-intense satisfactions, must structure as fantasies involving obstacles to achieve suspense. As fantasy becomes familiar, your mind jumps ahead to high points, collapsing the fantasy. Thus, need to select increasingly punishing scripts, and psychic life of people living in fantasy degenerates into recurring state of emergency or paranoid delusion.
Adaptive utility of learned habituation: if vivid rewards fade away into habit as you get better at obtaining them, then you remain motivated to explore. When increasing skill at an activity, reward increases at first, then decreases as your appetite lasts decreasingly long.
Will can impair reward by wasting available appetite, so best off using willpower in activities that are means to something else than things that are an end in themselves. Conversely, need to protect autotelic activities from your own efficiency by regarding them as means to something else.
Beliefs that foster suspense reward us more than those with internal consistency (accuracy). A gamble, predicting something that is tough enough without being impossible.
Why texts elevated above make-believe 1. Outside my control: Fiction has more emotional impact than my daydream with same content. 2) Rare - improbable sporting result. Thus current events more exciting than history (rarer than mass of history). 3) Surprising
Person who withdraws investment during scary part of movie oses chance to be rewarded by parts that follow, and also ability to keep investment in subsequent movies when they tempt disinvestment.
Facts that are rare, surprising become goods that reward us. Hence social constructivists threaten this uniqueness with nihilism, solipsism looming.
Greatest rewards from vicarious pleasure through gambles. Predicting other people becomes a highly rewarded activity for its emotion-occasioning value, not from how it helps you influence them.
Physiological appetite like food regenerates with time, but appetites for safety, wealth, comfort etc don’t. Hence once satiated it does not reward unless restored.
See appetite as a resource. Gamblers rationality in whetting appetite by losing the hoard.
Old rationales for optimizing sexual longing by blocking direct access are being broken by modern culture, instead see a market for alternative strategies - middle-class heterosexuals vastly overestimate their risk of getting AIDS.
Nerds/boors fail to appreciate the purpose of small talk in pacing the exchange of emotional occasion.
Since will spoils appetite by policing progress towards concrete milestones, we have an incentive to adopt indirectness that rewards by inefficiency in satisfying appetite. Identifying an activity as indirect spoils its purpose, it is often Freudian (unconscious) and recognizable as the butt of wit.
Plato Symposium, Love is the child of Poros (plenty) and Penia (poverty). That which is always flowing in is always flowing out, never in want and never in wealth.
Pendulum between classicism (simple, clear form, theory) and romanticism (mystery, intensity). Ultimate breakdown of will when efficiency has pushed pendulum further in direction of systemization than we can stand.
2 kinds of reward-strategies: 1) believe in importance of external tasks (getting money, knowledge, power) leads to behaviors that rush to completion 2) realize importance of appetite motivates search for obstacles or gambles, spoiling very belief in first task, hence needs to be learned indirectly, passed on through superstitions or otherwise irrational cultural mores.
Notes
Exponential discounting x * y% is far more forgiving than hyperbolic discounting x/y.
Pain has to compete for dominance in the marketplace just like pleasure - audio analgesia (listening to music makes dental procedure less painful) and hypnotic focus (convert painful stimulus into non-emotional stimulus like sun warming the skin).
Addiction rapidly cycled is itch. Itch rapidly cycled is pain.
Just like itch eventually ‘opens the floodgates’ to our reactions, pain similarly, except much faster and more instinctive, except when trained by a pain management course to see it as a judgment call.
Other experiences with similar motivation profile as pain: panic attacks, traumatic flashbacks, shivering in the cold - needs focused attention to stop.
In utility theory, reward (any experience that causes repetition of preceding behavior) and pleasure (any experience you perceive as desirable) are the same. In hyperbolic discounting, there is a split - brief reward (itching) create irresistible urges.
Pattern of pain and other aversive emotions like panic - vivid sensation + no-pleasure.
‘Drawn’ towards negative behavior (panic, grief etc), not pushed, so it is in some sense rewarding (but not pleasurable).
Competition among incompatible reward-seeking interests like species of animals in an ecosystem. Each have niches where they win.
Appetites vs Emotions vs Hungers. Appetite is a preliminary stage for a consumption module, hunger for food, anxiety for pain etc. Emotions have only preliminary stage, like grief/joy.
Emotions and motivations both move us to behavior, but former, like ‘hill’ in topography is an identifiable feature against a less prominent background, made of the same stuff.
Appetites selected to make the reward subjectively better, or the appetite itself rewarding. Stimuli provoking appetite are occasions selected to make appetite more rewarding. Hence we feel hungry just as food is ready etc.
4 strategies against will-breakdown: 1) extrapsychic commitment - disulferimide that makes alcohol nauseous, pill that reduces appetite, new year resolutions; 2) control of attention - suppress (consciously ignore urge), repress (unconsciously act in direction of ignoring urge), denial (ignore result of urge); 3) preparation of emotion - hunt beast with beast; Personal rules - self control comes from choosing patterns of behavior over time, thus a self-enforcing contract where every instance increases expectation of sticking to it.
Sophisticated bargaining: 1) different selves are in prisoner’s dilemma, while current-self cannot be punished by future-self, hurts cooperation/trust; 2) loophole of defecting this once while cooperating in general (exceptions) fixed by bright lines, with ego-function learned by how they improve intertemporal cooperation.
Ego not an organ, but a network server, a broker of cooperation.
Conceiving the stake of a personal side-bet as a patron-saint/god X who gives me strength to continue behavior x, or is offended when I give in to temptation.
Philosophers on Will: 1) Kavka problem - get paid if you intend to drink noxious (harmmless) liquid, even before actually drinking it, don’t need to go ahead. Incentive not to renege so as to maintain credibility of will to oneself 2) Free Will - intertemporal bargaining mediates gap between free will (choice is unknowable) and determinism (choice is not consciously known) if each successive prediction has an impact on choice (chaos) 3) Newcomb’’s problem - Predestination and impact on downstream choice.
Max Weber on paradox of how calvinist predestination increased self-control.
James-Lange theory of emotion - Person isn’t emitting a simple behavior, anger for instance, instead an emotion, followed by series of predictions about apparent strength of emotion being controllable, so repressing emotion softens the emotion.
Muscle behavior’s recursion: readiness potential in brain precedes awareness of intention to move, which in turn precedes movement by long enough to abort (ie, voluntary). Instigation - perception - self-prediction.
Indians of Great Plains had no word for will/willpower, but there motives are averaged not across time but across people - openness to social influence
Even Lawrence Kohlberg’s research that put categorical imperative on top (6th level) vs social influence only Level 2, saw girls ‘arrest’ at level 2 while males ‘progressed’ to 6. Males with iron-will needed for protection, competition, while women’s social art assuaged side effects of men - rigidity, inhibition, isolation to form symbiotic pair.
Premature satiation is limiting factor for emotional reward - 1) freely available reward available by value and duration of appetite. 2) hyperbolic discounting makes you impatient to reach peak consumption, premature satiation. 3) familiarity of sequence of events alone will dissipate appetite, needing surprise. 4) premature satiation weeds out emotions that are too frequent and controlled.
In modalities where an organism can mentally reward itself, surprise is the only commodity that can be scarce.
To repeat once-intense satisfactions, must structure as fantasies involving obstacles to achieve suspense. As fantasy becomes familiar, your mind jumps ahead to high points, collapsing the fantasy. Thus, need to select increasingly punishing scripts, and psychic life of people living in fantasy degenerates into recurring state of emergency or paranoid delusion.
Adaptive utility of learned habituation: if vivid rewards fade away into habit as you get better at obtaining them, then you remain motivated to explore. When increasing skill at an activity, reward increases at first, then decreases as your appetite lasts decreasingly long.
Will can impair reward by wasting available appetite, so best off using willpower in activities that are means to something else than things that are an end in themselves. Conversely, need to protect autotelic activities from your own efficiency by regarding them as means to something else.
Beliefs that foster suspense reward us more than those with internal consistency (accuracy). A gamble, predicting something that is tough enough without being impossible.
Why texts elevated above make-believe 1. Outside my control: Fiction has more emotional impact than my daydream with same content. 2) Rare - improbable sporting result. Thus current events more exciting than history (rarer than mass of history). 3) Surprising
Person who withdraws investment during scary part of movie oses chance to be rewarded by parts that follow, and also ability to keep investment in subsequent movies when they tempt disinvestment.
Facts that are rare, surprising become goods that reward us. Hence social constructivists threaten this uniqueness with nihilism, solipsism looming.
Greatest rewards from vicarious pleasure through gambles. Predicting other people becomes a highly rewarded activity for its emotion-occasioning value, not from how it helps you influence them.
Physiological appetite like food regenerates with time, but appetites for safety, wealth, comfort etc don’t. Hence once satiated it does not reward unless restored.
See appetite as a resource. Gamblers rationality in whetting appetite by losing the hoard.
Old rationales for optimizing sexual longing by blocking direct access are being broken by modern culture, instead see a market for alternative strategies - middle-class heterosexuals vastly overestimate their risk of getting AIDS.
Nerds/boors fail to appreciate the purpose of small talk in pacing the exchange of emotional occasion.
Since will spoils appetite by policing progress towards concrete milestones, we have an incentive to adopt indirectness that rewards by inefficiency in satisfying appetite. Identifying an activity as indirect spoils its purpose, it is often Freudian (unconscious) and recognizable as the butt of wit.
Plato Symposium, Love is the child of Poros (plenty) and Penia (poverty). That which is always flowing in is always flowing out, never in want and never in wealth.
Pendulum between classicism (simple, clear form, theory) and romanticism (mystery, intensity). Ultimate breakdown of will when efficiency has pushed pendulum further in direction of systemization than we can stand.
2 kinds of reward-strategies: 1) believe in importance of external tasks (getting money, knowledge, power) leads to behaviors that rush to completion 2) realize importance of appetite motivates search for obstacles or gambles, spoiling very belief in first task, hence needs to be learned indirectly, passed on through superstitions or otherwise irrational cultural mores.
March 24, 2017
Had high hopes but............
The book at the start was amazing and seemed to tackle all the feelings and dilemmas that an addict goes through.
But then from chapter 4 or so onwards, the book became too detailed, technical, complicated, and simply unhelpful.
I was hoping the book will get to providing a clear strategy for the addict to overcome his addiction, but this never came in the book, which was a big disappointment.
Maybe someone can come along and summarise this book in the for of an infographic animation, then bring something PRACTICAL out of it instead of just focusing on the analysis of the different theories about addictions.
The book at the start was amazing and seemed to tackle all the feelings and dilemmas that an addict goes through.
But then from chapter 4 or so onwards, the book became too detailed, technical, complicated, and simply unhelpful.
I was hoping the book will get to providing a clear strategy for the addict to overcome his addiction, but this never came in the book, which was a big disappointment.
Maybe someone can come along and summarise this book in the for of an infographic animation, then bring something PRACTICAL out of it instead of just focusing on the analysis of the different theories about addictions.
April 19, 2019
A great exploration of the ideas that humans use hyperbolic discounting utility curves, and that the unitary "self" is much more like a community of drives and processes forced to share the same apparatus. Recommended for anyone interested in will power, Dan Dennett's theory of consciousness, or recent discoveries in psychology.
January 9, 2020
This book is heady. I like it.
September 12, 2022
Hyperbolic discounting is an amazing concept. I have been wanting this for years. The closest I have read is Nassim Taleb's Black Swan and Antifragile.
July 25, 2014
The assumption of human rationality may be one of the most flawed assumptions in the domain of decision science. Once critique for this assumption comes from George Ainslie. George Ainslie in this book explains that our decisions are influenced by different zones of preference that exist in our behavior. He lists the following 5 zones of temporal preferences - Optimal, Compulsions, Addictions, Itches and Pains.
He argues that interests in one range of these temporal zones conflict with the interests in other zones. Reason and passion bid for control of person’s behavior using the same kind of currency. At any moment we make a decision our addictions compete with our compulsions or our optimal behavior compete with our itches. In that sense optimal behavior is just one of many sort of behaviors that we would exhibit. In general these behaviors are not naïve mistakes but the product of robust motives that persist despite an awareness of the behaviors’ cost.
The book is a tough read and may required some knowledge of theories in Decision Science to understand author's argument.
He argues that interests in one range of these temporal zones conflict with the interests in other zones. Reason and passion bid for control of person’s behavior using the same kind of currency. At any moment we make a decision our addictions compete with our compulsions or our optimal behavior compete with our itches. In that sense optimal behavior is just one of many sort of behaviors that we would exhibit. In general these behaviors are not naïve mistakes but the product of robust motives that persist despite an awareness of the behaviors’ cost.
The book is a tough read and may required some knowledge of theories in Decision Science to understand author's argument.
May 25, 2008
The book is not altogether right, but it is hugely interesting. ...a very inspiring read.
January 30, 2013
The right direction in understanding self regulation.
June 3, 2025
A better book on psychology, the maddening task of scientific theorizing about the mind and willpower may never be written.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews