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Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

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Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#101

Post by pi-e-sigma »

wruza wrote: post #75
wcarron wrote: post #44

[flagged]

That is a commonly observable post-willpower attitude. Unfortunately it doesn’t help those for whom it didn’t work. It’s like saying get up and live to a depressed one. Saying that as a guy who punched evolving clinical depression in her face without medications with character-intrinsic anger. The problem with that approach is that not everyone has anger as a reaction so default that it still remains in a depressed s…

Also, people claiming such wins and calling others weak for not doing the same come across as a bit... not self-aware? If your will power is so great why did you end up with these bad addictions in the first place?

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#102

Post by cardanome »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #52

Good thing I didn’t read such a bullshit defeatist conclusion before I dropped 40 lbs 7 years ago (adopted sane diet, never gained it back) and dug myself out of a deep hole of alcohol dependence. haven’t beaten the habit of falling for engagement baiting headlines though i suppose do not let yourself believe you are weak or a victim

If you had failed at losing 40lbs of weight and quitting alcohol dependence, would you be here writing that the only reason you failed was lack of willpower?

Rich people always think they worked hard to be rich, while poor people rarely think they deserve being poor.

Attributing success to internal factors while externalizing failure is actually psychologically healthy, at least much more than the reverse, but it still leads to certain cognitive biases. Yes, some level of magical thinking, "You just need to want it" is actually sometimes helpful on the PERSONAL level but it is just a convenient lie we tell ourselves to keep pushing on. It is a very harmful lie when people try to understand society in general with this.

The truth is that we can only break habits when external and internal circumstances align to allow us to do so.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#103

Post by wwtdtgotiatl »

endisneigh wrote: post #96
ceejayoz wrote: post #83

These threads always bring out a whole bunch of people who confuse confirmation bias with population-level statistics. If you kicked a heroin habit, good for you! Societally we still can’t use “suck it up you pansies” as a drug rehab strategy just on your say-so.

It is interesting that a forum filled with a disproportionate amount of techies still fall for such biases

Why would techies be less susceptible to bias compared to the general population?

That statement itself seems like it would be a cognitive bias.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#104

Post by arp242 »

CPLX wrote: post #21

[flagged]

This is just undirected cynicism. It doesn't even engage with anything in the article, which is considerably more in-depth than your comment implies.

While social sciences and behavioural research as a field has its share of issues, to claim it's "all just nonsense and bullshit" is far more nonsense and bullshit. And what's the alternative? "Common sense"? "What my dad told me"? Because that's always on point...

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#105

Post by s1artibartfast »

ceejayoz wrote: post #83

These threads always bring out a whole bunch of people who confuse confirmation bias with population-level statistics. If you kicked a heroin habit, good for you! Societally we still can’t use “suck it up you pansies” as a drug rehab strategy just on your say-so.

I think that is because it is a terrible message. It isnt an either/or situation, and successful breaking habits does rely on willpower, just not willpower alone.

Smart strategy can make things easier, but there is no strategy that makes it easier to stop heroin than do to keep it.

It advertises the idea that with the right circumstances, you can make it so that the desirable option is always the easiest option - this simply isnt true.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#107

Post by wcarron »

wruza wrote: post #75
wcarron wrote: post #44

[flagged]

That is a commonly observable post-willpower attitude. Unfortunately it doesn’t help those for whom it didn’t work. It’s like saying get up and live to a depressed one. Saying that as a guy who punched evolving clinical depression in her face without medications with character-intrinsic anger. The problem with that approach is that not everyone has anger as a reaction so default that it still remains in a depressed s…

I heartily disagree. We are not slaves and victims to our biology and environments. We are, and always have been, our own masters. Want to lose weight? Eat less. Want to eat healthier? Stop buying fast food. Want to get fitter? Go to the gym. Want to make make more friends. Force yourself into more social interactions. Want to quit nicotine? Suck it up and shiver in cold sweats on your floor for 4 days.

You can throw whatever objections you desire here. They are not sustained. Ultimate culpability and responsibility has always been with us.

Do you think I'm post-willpower? That's laughable. I still, and probably always will, crave nicotine. I drive by gas stations all the time and that little voice "just one tin" is there. I say no. Anyone can. Simply put: It is a choice. You choose what you do and are, every single time, without exception. That is the freedom to which every human is sentenced.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#108

Post by Supermancho »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #4
antwerp1 wrote: post #3

It’s just like decision fatigue: your capacity for it diminishes the more you use it (within a given time range). Instead, carefully curate your identity . This is described well in Atomic Habits. Train yourself to think “I am just not the kind of person who does x.”

Whether decision fatigue is a real thing has been called in to question: https://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_stor...

Anyone can make a decision without much thought, which most humans do at every moment of their existence.

Making informed decisions takes conscious thought, much less keeping the decisions equally informed. There's only so much of that you can do and humans are particularly bad at recognizing the subtle decline in quality of thought.

There's no question at all.

Re: Studies suggest that relying on will power to break habits is hopeless (2019)

#109

Post by broscillator »

derbOac wrote: post #87

I was at a research colloquium once and this came up in the context of dieting. The author of that research was making similar statements, although the focus of the research was different. The problem I had with what they were describing was that they basically defined away willpower. That is, it felt like they basically said "once you control for all the downstream effects of willpower, willpower no longer has an ef…

The way I view it is fairly simple: the things you list involve planning. Willpower is how you react in the moment.

You could phrase it like this: the willpower to resist going out and getting cigarettes is much easier to perform than the willpower to not grab a cigarette that's in front of you.

However "will power to resist going to the store" isn't really utilizing will power to stop smoking, it's having an effective strategy that relies on knowing how hard it will be for your future self to actually employ that will power if the cigarettes do reach your desk.

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