The One True Self

[dreeves]

### Desiderata
- [ ] Have someone read a draft
- [ ] Keywords/tags
- [x] Title image
- [ ] Link preview excerpt
- [ ] Publish
- [ ] Blog blurbs
- [ ] Waggledance
- [ ] Tweet
- [ ] Tip of the day

http://doc.bmndr.co/trueself

Originally from dreev's comment on a Psychology Today article.

This got a fair bit of pretty fair pushback when I floated it in a beemail.

PS: I ended up using the title image idea (bee looking in a mirror) for a different post.

https://labs.openai.com/s/7ThxphJf1wkPmy4kkp8OufHc

Verbata: floated in beemails, psychology, philosophy of akrasia, system 1 vs system 2,

[dreeves]

Another attempt at articulating this (HT Clive):

Define System 2 to be the slow, analytical reasoning part of your brain. The fast and gut-attuned System 1, by contrast, is doing all sorts of vital work that System 2 can't compete with. Either because it would take too long to be useful, or because it's not directly plugged in to various chemical/sensory inputs that System 1 is plugged into.

But sometimes System 1 will lead you astray. It will be myopic, impetuous, akratic. System 2 can, by its nature, assess when it's optimal to override System 1. The same does not apply in reverse.

That asymmetry justifies things like Beeminder.

So it's not that I'm a System 2 absolutist, just that when System 1 and 2 clash, System 2 can understand and factor in the reasons System 1 may be right. After doing so, if there's still a conflict, then System 2 must be right. It's like Aumann's agreement theorem: initially I disagree with you but I do the Bayesian update on the fact that we disagreed, and so do you, and now we agree after all. A perfectly rational System 2 (um, maybe that's the big assumption I forgot to ever specify?) will Bayesian-update on System 1 and henceforth be perfectly correct.

More simply: If you're like "my head says X but my gut says Y" then consider how often the optimum is Y in such cases, analyze the reasons your gut is saying Y, factor in the possibility that you've utterly misunderstood those reasons, and THEN do whatever your head now says, all things considered. For plenty of people that rounds to "go with your gut". Do you rationally agree that that's you? Great, that's your head saying so. Head wins (or at worst ties) in the end after all!

[dreeves]