
Against Willpower - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/against-willpower
======
ux-app
I've thought about this in the past, and one thing I dislike about the way
willpower is framed in everyday conversation is as a moral judgement.

I.e. "he is still smoking because he has a _weak_ will"

The implied idea there is that he should try harder.

But my personal belief is that we have far less agency than we like to
believe. That person with greater ability to say no to certain things
(smoking, overeating etc.), can they take credit for superior moral fortitude?
I don't think so. That ability to resit <insert vice> was hard-coded in their
genes. They can no more take credit for it than a tall person can feel
superior for being tall. You don't will yourself to be taller. It's written in
your genes. Why would "willpower" be any different?

I'm not sure where that leads us though. Do we just throw our hands in the air
and say "well, I'm subject to my genes therefore I'll stop trying". That
doesn't seem very productive. In reality there probably is an element of hard
work involved (although, the rabbit hole continues further. Why are some able
to put in the hard work and others not? Genes again.), but there are limits to
how much "stronger" you can make your will. Even though I will never beat
Usain Bolt in a race I _can_ improve my own PB through hard work, however my
total ability is bounded by my genes.

It's a liberating view to take. Keep trying and don't fret too much when you
fall short of whatever mark you'd ideally like to achieve.

~~~
nradov
And yet millions of people — including my father and uncle — have successfully
quit smoking cold turkey (no nicotine gum or patches) after being addicted for
years. So willpower obviously counts for something.

~~~
ux-app
That's not really what I was getting at. My point was that those that do quit
<vice> deserve the roughly the same amount of praise as a tall person deserves
for being tall.

Why did they have the motivation to give up? Not through some personal moral
superiority, but rather it was encoded in their genes. How much control did
they have over this encoding? None.

~~~
sn9
I feel like both you and the person you responded to failed to read the
article.

And you seem to be completely ignoring the environmental factors involved in
behavior, which are much more significant than those involved in height (e.g.,
avoiding malnourishment during the first 20 years of your life). The article
mentioned a few of them.

~~~
ux-app
I'm actually fully in agreement with the article. I just thought I'd chime in
with personal view as this idea of will power and moral judgement is extremely
pervasive in society. We have, for the most part, only vague control over our
actions, wants desires etc.

from the article:

 _" The best way forward may be to let go of “willpower” altogether.

Doing so would rid us of some considerable moral baggage. Notions of willpower
are easily stigmatizing: ... An extreme example is the punitive approach of
our endless drug war, which dismisses substance use problems as primarily the
result of individual choices."_

I don't see substance abuse as an issue of moral weakness. It's simply a pre-
encoded genetic predisposition. From this it directly follows that those that
avoid vices and lead healthy lives also don't deserve any special credit. They
are doing it because their genes dictate it. You are, for the most part, along
for the ride, good or bad.

~~~
sn9
Right, but that's still ignoring the environmental component which throws a
wrench into your reasoning.

Particularly relevant from the article is the part of reframing the problem as
a means of kicking addiction. Obviously, this isn't a silver bullet, but it's
also part of the evidence against this notion of genetic determinism as
predominant factor.

(We're in agreement regarding the whole moralizing aspect of this.)

------
chki
I think that there is also an interesting connection between the common
concept of willpower and "free will" itself. When discussing "free will" it
often comes down to the "free" part of the brain that exercises willpower
against the "unfree" part of underlying emotions/feelings etc.

Obviously that is quite an oversimplification and the brain just works a lot
more complicated that. But - as the article points out - it is a concept that
influences our notion of other humans a lot. We say that those who have a
fundamental problem with the "unfree" part of their brain are ill and we try
to help them medically. Those who do things with the "free" part of the brain
but fail to properly control the "unfree" part (overweight/drinking problem)
are treated very differently. Which might evolutionally speaking be a very
reasonable differentiation for humans to pursue. But we don't want our society
shaped by what is right evolutionally. Therefore we probably need some new
research into that direction to make correct decisions on who is free and who
isn't - which fundamentally shapes certain aspects of our society (criminal
law/health law etc.)

------
scottlocklin
There is this interesting trend in the social sciences to deny the existence
of inconvenient parts of reality. "Oh, my field failed to reproduce an
important experiment on one theory (ego depletion) of willpower: therefore
willpower doesn't exist, and I will turn this towards a conversation on
bargaining which I (as a psychologist/legal/economics scholar) know something
about; pay no attention to the fact that I actually named a piece of the brain
involved in exerting willpower."

Maybe there is no such thing as "willpower." Maybe some dope is indulging in
nihilism in an attempt to get us to click on his article. I'm open minded, but
I don't think his argument is much good.

~~~
coldtea
> _pay no attention to the fact that I actually named a piece of the brain
> involved in exerting willpower. "_

You seem to have payed little attention to the fact that the author refers to
several experiments that point to the absence (or severe limits) of willpower
as such.

------
almonj
How is the guy analyzing his drinking, finding the problem (too much stress)
and then reducing that not an example of using willpower? The author creates a
selective definition of the word that does not make any sense. Telling people
that "willpower is bad" seems like an extremely dumb idea.

~~~
barrkel
It's not that willpower is bad; it's that willpower is a word that's being
used for something that doesn't exist, that is a symptom of the interaction
between different systems. So rather than figuring out what is the cause of
something, people point at the symptom, and say that willpower is lacking.

With that in mind, it's better to forget about the imaginary concept of
willpower altogether, and look at reframing things so that different decision
making systems come to the fore; or altering factors that are gumming up the
decision making process.

The point at the end about stigmatizing people for lacking this imaginary
attribute is particularly important. It's political, too; if you curtail
people's freedom even in their best interests, it's easy to become corrupted
from that position of power. Maintaining a belief in an invented character
defect is a convenient way of deflecting the responsibility, but it's not
necessarily any less evil.

~~~
placebo
I once conveyed this belief to someone who had been through a path that is
equivalent in difficulty to what the US nave SEALs have to go through. I told
him that perhaps willpower is an illusion and it's basically has to do whether
the net total of motivation is above or below zero given a set of
circumstances. He answered that from his experience, motivation takes you up
to a certain point but beyond it something else comes into play which he
called willpower.

I don't take the personal experience and interpretation of a single person to
be much evidence for the existence of this vaguely defined concept called
willpower, but just thought this anecdote would be of interest

~~~
barrkel
And my message in this thread was an exercise in adopting a viewpoint, to see
how it feels. I've found it sometimes useful to go to the far end of something
to shift my default position.

I think there is some effortful thing in the mind that sometimes needs to be
engaged to accomplish something, but perhaps that effort is expended at a
different level. Maybe it's constantly bringing a goal to mind, to support one
decision making process. Maybe it's breaking a habit by avoiding what triggers
it, or creating a new habit. Generally, expending conscious effort to change
the tracks of the unconscious train, not by steering it.

It's too facile to call it willpower though; I think it needs to be more
strategic than that, and I think the baggage of the word is unhelpful.

------
openfuture
People seem to think willpower is something you use to fight against yourself
but I feel it's actually a way to fight with yourself.

An example of willpower is to stave off peer pressure, or living a life you
believe in despite the inconveniences it might entail.. like not using
Facebook or something, although I guess that's also a form of peer pressure so
maybe my 'example' would also be a sufficient definition...

So the guy clearly believes that alcohol is a good way to unwind from stress
but he may also believe that he should hide his drinking, thereby he was
willing to go through all that trouble (being tipsy all the time _and_ hiding
it) by exercising willpower.

Your beliefs shape the flow of your life, willpower is how that flow overcomes
obstacles (e.g. peer pressure, circumstances) or a way to nudge the direction,
thereby slightly changing your life. If you want to quit a substance
dependence you need to change the underlying pattern, swim out of the rip
instead of against it.

------
erikb
I don't know. They might've just chosen a bad example. But it seems quite
unconvincing since it's using the exact same example that is already used by
the willpower-exists way of thinking. Summary usually goes like this: Since
willpower is limited, try to reduce the stress and don't beat yourself up
about failures, because that would exaust the willpower you need to succeed.

------
heisenbit
Worth a read even if it could be a bit more straightforward. What I found
valuable was the author distinguishing

\- willpower (and providing some historical context)

\- self-control

\- ego depletion (he points to debunking studies)

\- temporal discounting

\- emotional regulation

Anyone struggling to make headway with a challenge may benefit from taking a
step back and looking at the bigger picture.

------
Terr_
> understood through the lens of “intrapersonal bargaining"

This comic regarding willpower and "intrapersonal" messages is highly relevant
here:

[http://existentialcomics.com/comic/13](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/13)

~~~
TulliusCicero
This comic seems kind of dumb.

> If it was you who decided there would be no conflict, for a thing cannot be
> in conflict with itself, such is a contradiction.

What? Of course you can be in conflict with yourself. People have mixed
feelings and conflicting desires _constantly_. Different parts of our mind can
want different things. Is the author a robot or something, to have never
experienced this?

> Remember indeed, but not a decision! You simply had a thought, and an empty
> thought at that! You stood there like a fool and declared you would no
> longer smoke, and then what? And then nothing!

First off, what does the author think a decision, is, exactly? _Most_
decisions aren't things that are acted upon immediately after the decision is
made.

Secondly, the thing in question is the stopping of an addictive habit. By
definition, quitting smoking literally IS doing nothing.

> And this is what you need, Sanus, to quit smoking: You need obedience, not
> will!

I thought it was obvious that willpower IS obedience, obedience to yourself,
or rather the wiser part of yourself, the part that isn't focused on base or
shallow urges.

~~~
rdmsr
It's a comic that oversimplifies philosophical arguments and (often) makes fun
of them.

------
Kenji
I said it before (and I got downvoted a lot), but I'll say it again:

Willpower is not about forcing yourself to do something, but to deliberately
put yourself into a situation that forces you to do it.

This is how self-control really works. If you can't stop drinking, join the
military or something. You'll sober up real quick.

~~~
ue_
No matter what I can't motivate myself to work for my university first year
degree. And going to the library doesn't help either, I seem to find myself
just sitting and not doing much at all.

~~~
zubat
That may just be misplaced energy. If you can't study but you can sit there
practicing guitar or working on a hobby coding project for hours, you are
certainly capable in a physical sense. But your mind cannot say "I will do my
homework with identical enthusiasm to my guitar practice" and just have it
happen. That is where the mythical aspect of willpower manifests and people do
all sorts of things to try to make it work like that, but most people, I
think, end up finding a substance to use that blunts their thinking in a
particular way that helps them stay on task. That could be caffeine, or
alcohol, or pot, or Adderall. Other people try to build elaborate social
obligations with study groups and use of office hours. But the biggest success
tends to be from getting the intrinsic motivations in place, the "I want to
know what happens next" factor and those are never easy to find. Sometimes you
just have to start from zero and do something very simple and low energy like
washing dishes before you can access a higher level of concentration, and then
quickly use that moment of concentration to make a breakthrough.

------
vivekd
One of the points the article relies on is ego depletion which as a theory is
coming into question because of issues with replication

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/07/31/en...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/07/31/end-
of-ego-depletion/)

The other point seemed to be about how willpower alone will eventually cave in
so other strategies like interpersonal bargaining will be required as well.
That's not really news. I think we all knew that already. For example we
wouldn't tell a recovering alcoholic to hang out in a bar where everyone is
drinking and rely on will power alone. We also tell alcoholics to think of the
benefits of not drinking and weight that against drinking. That does not show
that willpower is useless or has no place, but that it's a part of a strategy
to overcome addictions or build good habits.

~~~
arjie
Wait a minute. Did you actually read the article? I literally came here to
post the opposite comment. The article directly claims that ego depletion is
debunked.

> The recently published results failed to show any evidence that ego
> depletion is real. It appears to be just another casualty of psychology’s
> replication crisis.

I did not know that ego depletion is considered to have little evidence behind
it and wanted to remark that the article saying so has caused me to rethink
things.

~~~
Tarrosion
Likewise. I had read of ego depletion before and didn't realize it was having
a replication crisis. I like that this article has me update my priors.

