Pre-commitment vs Akrasia

In engineering a thing you learn very early is that solving problems is okay but not having them in the first place is better.

There are a few reasons people behave in immoral ways. For any given situation I think they are

• They have a different set of moral priors/beliefs than I do and act according to those.
• They have a mistaken factual belief/assessment (although I question how far that’s really being immoral, but that’s a question for another time)
• They fail to do what they think is right in a given situation The third one is often what we call akrasia, or weakness of will. It’s something academic philosophy doesn’t spend much time on. I think this is because there’s no much that’s intellectually deep or interesting to say on it. Still, it’s important and an under-explored cause of moral weakness.

What are some ways to deal with akrasia? Some thoughts

• Cultivating courage as a virtue in yourself over time (training your system 1 & 2)
• trying to [[Wake Up]] and explicitly remember to engage your system 2 in moral decisions rather than operating on autopilot. (I think religious teachings like “What would jesus do” are partially doing this)
• training your system 1 via routine/habit formation. e.g: call and response excercises, role playing moral scenarios etc…
• avoiding the need for courage in the first place by changing your trade-offs.

I think the fourth strategy is often especially useful. The problem with akrasia is that doing the wrong thing is more pleasurable/easier. By making it harder/more painful, you make doing the right thing easier. A simple example. You think drinking alcohol is bad. You are tempted to drink. You convert to islam, surround yourself with devout muslims and marry a devout muslim woman. Now if you ever do decide to drink you risk incurring a high social cost.

How can you apply this to other moral issues? Some examples:

• If you’re worried about conformity, adopt a policy of making explicit public bets on your beliefs. Spend 5% of your income doing so. The more you conform, the more money you loose and the dumber you look.
• If you’re irrationally scared of being cancelled, publicly publish a list of your most controversial beliefs.  (TODO)