Comment by practicalpoet on Group Rationality Diary, April 1-15 · 2014-04-02T20:17:33.912Z · LW · GW

Akrasia is a colorful trap, sometimes; a lovely slough called Despond by those who know it better. For the fall does not kill you, nor the landing - it only traps you, mired in your past actions, unable to escape your previous self. It's a place I have known well, and before I had its true name - before I could conceptualize it as an individual set of tendencies and thought-patterns, could see it as a selves-contained Prisoners' Dilemma - it was a trap I tended to reenter time and again. Having connected my understanding of Akrasia at last with another useful practice, that if believing what you know you will believe, I feel like my Self - the man I want to be, and more and more resemble - is better defended now against that's to its existence and peace.

Example: I have never been with someone else while in a committed relationship, simply reminding myself if tempted the point of the word "committed," and that my partner is equally human as I, and will be displeased, and that my partner in infidelity is also equally human and should not be used to satisfy a temporary compulsion that I would later regret. "Regret," here, is the key word. There are those who have two or more sexual partners, either secretly and deceitfully, or honestly and agreeably, and I have not been either. Nor do I want to, actually; I do not want to hunt for an additional, even single-instance, partner. More specifically, I want not to be with more than one person at a time, for my own personal and emotional reasons, and I would regret going against that wish. But the base urge is still there, though I do not mistake it a sinful or depraved one when acted upon rationally and with respect and honesty for all parties involved. I simply do not wish to act upon this urge, as it is not the kind of person I want to be who would do so.

But the urge is there, and without having my concept of Akrasia's Despond, I could have been significantly less happy than I am now, as a human, a lover of humans (and one in particular,) and a father-to-be.