Experiential Pica

What if akrasia is experiential pica?

In my case, it definitely seems to be so. I noticed that my akratic habit #1, competitive PC gaming, seems to kick in when I have a status or achievement deficiency. I'm a reinforcement whore, so when I don't have a steady stream of incoming positive reinforcements, which happens a lot on long projects, I may turn to games to get a quick and reliable fix.

the brain is very bad at communicating certain needs to the systems that can get those needs met.

It's not so much that the brain is bad at communicating, as that you have a bad expectation lodged in it. Or in common idiom, "you can never get enough of what you don't really need in the first place."

Example: last month I did a workshop and the demonstration volunteer was spending too much time on Twitter instead of working. Turns out, even if he spent "25 hours a day" (his words) on Twitter, it still wasn't going to fix the hole in his social life that was left by not working at an office any more. His brain had latched onto Twitter as a partial substitute, and was trying like crazy to make it work.

So I (sort of) agree with your general idea of akrasia as experiential pica. But IMO the cause (in both akrasia and pica) is erroneous information in your brain's planning table that predicts you will get an increase in what you want/need if only you eat ice or get on twitter. The rest of the machinery can be functioning perfectly normally.

My wife, for example, satisfies her iron cravings by eating liver and almonds, while until I knew I was potassium deficient, I satisfied my cravings mainly with raisins. (Now I try to substitute apricots, which have more potassium and less sugar.)

This raises the question: how did our brains know? The PCT explanation would be that we have internal controllers for how much iron or potassium is required, and the normal predictive function of memory is sufficient to link the perception of a particular taste/smell with the following rise in nutrient availability. So the controllers for nutrients simply request a perception of the tastes in question, causing goal-seeking behavior to make you hunt down the remembered food.

What's really interesting about pica, though, is that in order for this to happen with eating ice, there would have to be a hard-wired association between crunching and iron -- since there is no way for that association to be learned by the usual pathway. (For any non-food other than ice that actually contains iron, note that the usual predictive pathway and controller behavior suffices as an explanation. For ice, we can assume that it's the only crunchy thing you can keep eating without incurring conflict from your general appetite controller.)

It also raises the question of whether pica sufferers(?) ever had any iron-rich foods, or whether perhaps a pica sufferer not only has an iron deficiency, but a taste-learning problem. If it's a taste-learning problem, then we might expect pica sufferers to have a different response to the Shangri-la diet than non-pica sufferers.

We've gone out on a limb with the akrasia discussion. Posts seem like they are using loose references to published material to justify grand pet theories. The term akrasia has become a tent under which all manner of effects and phenomena are being housed. A counter-reductionist trend has set in. The definition of akrasia grows, the manners of dealing with it expand, possible theories of methods of its identification and mitigation can be found in every other top level post. It has the feel of rat hole.

There is too much explanation and not enough prediction. What am I to anticipate?

Solving the problem of the erosion of will and of short term preferences is going to take more than pouring cold water into our own ears. It is likely not generally solvable through introspection.

This discussion of akrasia afflicts this community like a kind of akrasia -- a fertile field for arm chair theories to distract us from harder problems.

Meditation? Really? "Reset my experiential pica?" What?

I propose a one month ban on the akrasia topic. If there is something to be gained through introspection on the subject let those with an interest introspect. For now, though, the only thing these posts lead me to anticipate is a post titled "Akrasia: Because of Magic!"

the brain misfires. It didn't make me crave liver and shellfish and molasses, it made me crave water in frozen form.

I think it's been suggested that this craving made sense when cracking bones with your teeth released iron-rich marrow, and ice cubes were not available. (Hearsay from Seth Roberts's blog; I don't have a reference.)

Study the habits of highly effective people. Do you know somebody who seems unplagued by akrasia?

Let's not forget that akrasia can manifest itself in "being busy in the wrong way", as opposed to just being lazy. The person may be occupied 20 hours a day working on something, but this doesn't necessarily mean that this something is their "best judgment".

A better idea would be to watch people who directly or indirectly declare their goals, then achieve them.

The frequently heard advice to "get out more" might be related to this.

and started taking iron supplements. I stopped eating ice. I stopped having any interest in eating ice at all.

What did this feel like? Did you previously crave ice, and then stop craving it? Or did you just happen to eat ice, and just happen to stop? (by "just happen" I guess I mean that you could observe your behavior but couldn't explain it; I guess the part about excuses matches this, but you talk about craving elsewhere. and the exit may have felt different from the entrance.)

trivia: the most efficient source of dietary iron is tomatoes cooked in a cast-iron pan.

If you are severely plagued by akrasia, and there is some large class of experiences that you completely leave out of your life, attempt to find a way to incorporate something from that class.

I find this suggestion hard to follow. There are far more experiences I don't have than ones I do have, and I think this is true for almost everyone. How would I know where to start? Should I take up dancing? Baking? Painting? Horse riding? Ant farming? Blogging? :-)

If our brains can have a deficiency of some kind of activity, there must be a relatively small number of such activity types. Unless we can figure out what they are we won't make much progress.

Also, unlike pica (where you say at least some sufferers have a craving for iron-rich food, which helps them), we don't know if "positive" akrasia ever drives people to do the thing they lack (because we don't know what it is they lack). Why should we suppose akrasia ever serves to fix a problem except by coincidence?

As for the habits of highly effective people, you might check into the book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"... my father had a copy and it's really quite good, it's far from being the superficial "think positive" kind of book that it's often assumed to be. Not much about Akrasia though.

I might be considered someone little affected by akrasia, or who's standards for akrasia have risen substantially. I sleep polyphasically (the "Everyman" schedule, about 4.5 hours a day) and spend about 14-18 hours a day trying to bring about positive futures and avoid existential risk. Of course that focus doesn't translate directly into getting something done, but that's improving too.

The ultimate lack of akrasia might be an ultimate lack of "downtime", the real goal being the accomplishment of your objectives (recall the 12th Virtue). Though if you truly need downtime to be most productive then it's not akrasia. I do still have downtime, mainly video games and socialization, which have for me the highest motivational/recharging benefit per time. I also exercise, which you might count as downtime. In regards to activities I look at what I'm getting out of them, what's making me keep doing them (new games -> bad idea for me), and what are the best ways to get the first and avoid the second.

The main thing that keeps my "akrasia-fighting efforts" going is huge amounts of motivation (6.7 billion people is a hell of a lot), and it's been a long process of a little over a year, getting to where I am now. The most productive thing has been slowly aligning what I consider normal and personally acceptable with what I expect is the best course of action, so that being that active just feels assumed and takes little willpower (usually). I.e. it becomes a habit. A year ago I used to scold myself for playing through an entire RPG, now I scold myself for playing Unreal Tournament 15 minutes longer than I need to overcome sleep inertia.

There's hasn't been any single magical thought that let me drop huge swaths of irrational behavior, it's been innumerable smaller thoughts and an intense motivation to keep improving. This level of activity was impossible before I had a goal so much larger than myself. I recently started a blog about this motivation, NormalHumanHeroes, though it doesn't yet have anything about akrasia. It's aimed primarily at transhumanists, with some limited focus on the problem of FAI.

Does this have any insights for meditation? Some of my friends swear by it but I cannot bring myself to use the time. Could I meditate for an hour and reset my experiential pica for the day?

Saw something like this just recently on how reading small bites on the Internet trains our "drive" (keep pushing button) rather than "satiation" (actually feel good) circuits. Can't seem to find it just now - anyone got the link?

Hrm... This seems to ring true for me too. Maybe not completely, but sometimes it feels like I'm poking around online or otherwise, looking for "something"... but no idea what it is that I'm looking for.

This is certainly an interesting idea, but I'm skeptical. I've noticed that a few practices have that effect (exercise, for example), but it seems to me that it's more a matter of habitually exercising willpower than getting the right mix of experiences. Lots of extremely successful people just spend all their time doing whatever it is that they do well.

For example, when I read this pleasant profile of Richard Posner, I don't imagine that he's a great jurist because he goes to the zoo or plays with his cat; I imagine that he's a great jurist because, aside from playing with his cat, eating, sleeping, and commuting, he spends all his time obsessing over the law.

Wikipedia states that there is "scant research" "which suggests that the disorder is caused by mineral deficiency in many cases", and also lists other possible causes such as OCD. So Pica may, or may not, be mostly related to deficiencies. We also know that the rate of incidence of Pica is low in general, i.e. < 5% of people probably have it, so conclusions drawn about people who have Pica may not generalize well. The study referenced in the "scant research" sentence states:

Pica is probably a behavior pattern driven by multiple factors. Some recent evidence supports including pica with the obsessive-compulsive spectrum of disorders. Many different treatment regimens have been described, with variable responses. It is important to be aware of this common, but commonly missed, condition.

So we should be clear that (a) little research has been done (b) Pica may be caused by OCD, or by mineral deficiencies.

Then we have to consider the analogy between Pica and Akrasia; the body displays behavior X in situation T, maybe it also displays it in situation S? The prior on such analogies being valid is surely low, if nothing else because there are multiple different analogies that can be made which give differing conclusions.

For example, we could use obesity as an analogy for akrasia, and claim that maybe the problem is that you are doing too much (in analogy with obesity being because you eat too much). Obesity is much more common than pica, and there is a lot more research on it. Why not follow this advice instead?

The post caches out as "to fight akrasia, you might need to perform some random activity such as composing a symphony that you have never done before.", which is actually of little help for any individual here, because the list of activities that they might be "deficient" in is endless.

Article on the history of pica: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/balanced-diets.php?page=all

As for the habits of highly effective people, you might check into the book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"... my father had a copy and it's really quite the book, and is far from being the superficial "think positive" kind of book that it's often assumed to be. Not much about Akrasia though.

I might be considered someone little affected by akrasia, or who's standards for akrasia have risen substantially. I sleep polyphasically (the "Everyman" schedule, about 4.5 hours a day) and spend about 14-18 hours a day trying to bring about positive futures and avoid existential risk. Of course that focus doesn't translate directly into getting something done, but that's improving too.

The ultimate lack of akrasia might be an ultimate lack of "downtime", the real goal being the accomplishment of your objectives (recall the 12th Virtue). Though if you truly need downtime to be most productive then it's not akrasia. I do still have downtime, mainly video games and socialization, which have for me the highest motivational/recharging benefit per time. I also exercise, which you might count as downtime. In regards to activities I look at what I'm getting out of them, what's making me keep doing them (new games -> bad idea for me), and what are the best ways to get the first and avoid the second.

The main thing that keeps my "akrasia-fighting efforts" going is huge amounts of motivation (6.7 billion people is a hell of a lot), and it's been a long process of a little over a year, getting to where I am now. The most productive thing has been slowly aligning what I consider normal and personally acceptable with what I expect is the best course of action, so that being that active just feels assumed and takes little willpower (usually). I.e. it becomes a habit. A year ago I used to scold myself for playing through an entire RPG, now I scold myself for playing Unreal Tournament 15 minutes longer than I need to overcome sleep inertia.

There's hasn't been any single magical thought that let me drop huge swaths of irrational behavior, it's been innumerable smaller thoughts and an intense motivation to keep improving. This level of activity was impossible before I had a goal so much larger than myself. i recently started a blog about this motivation, though it doesn't yet have anything about akrasia. It's aimed primarily at transhumanists, with some limited focus on the problem of FAI.

Excellent post. The one problem I have with the analogy is that pica is almost completely objective; it involves eating non-food items and is (usually) caused by a mineral deficiency. Akrasia isn't quite like that. It's entirely possible that doing Z will cause you to stop doing X, but there does not appear to be an objective sense in which Z is the real thing you need and X was a misguided proxy. Plenty of people play World of Warcraft and never go outside, and they can continue to be excellent, cheerful Warcraft-players. Pica, by contrast, can be harmful itself (ice is one of the most pleasant non-food substances one could pick) and also indicates the body not functioning correctly; mineral deficiencies have both measurable effects on people and (I think) experiential effects in the sense of poor health/energy/whatever mineral deficiencies do. Akrasia seems to lack such objective referents; one could sit down and play WoW for the rest of one's life and, in theory, be perfectly happy about it.

Study the habits of highly effective people.

We don't really have access to unfiltered information about lives of other people. No matter if that's someone we know, or someone famous people bother to write about, the information we get is filtered and distorted by people's idea of what it should be like so many times, it has nothing to do with reality.

Which did you find more satisfying:

• sucking on the ice and letting it melt
• chewing it to bits

A rewrite, using Feeling words: if you feel happy, content and fulfilled, you will be better able to do the things you have to do. If you believe that doing those things is likely to accomplish a goal you have, you will be better able to motivate yourself to do them. If you cannot bring yourself to do what you have to do, find something which will make you feel happy, content or fulfilled; or if you cannot do that, play Tetris or whatever which will at least take your mind off the guilt, until it comes back worse later.

What will make you feel fulfilled? What will make you feel that doing the task you have to do will make achieving your goal more likely?

I have a more relatable analogy: Akrasia is experiential porn addiction.