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Comment by piratebroadcast | Hacker News Reader

ELI5?

Basically, there was a theory that exercising self-control would "deplete" ones "self-control reserves". The idea was that exercising your self-control, to say avoid a junk food, would temporarily decrease your ability to resist that temptation again.

This paper reports that not only were they unable to verify any of the prior research into this so called "ego depletion" effect, but they found more persuasive evidence suggesting that the theory is false.

This is reassuring. Every time someone told me this I figured it had to be bullshit. I think people used it as an excuse to make bad decisions.

...and you're exemplifying confirmation bias right there, which is the whole reason this happened in the first place.

Having an opinion that is later vindicated is not the same thing as confirmation bias.

Gross. It sounds like a total failure to correctly model reality.

Like measuring how blue the sky is, based on how much "blue" is left in the universe. The idea they attempt to quantify is improperly described in terms of qualities. e.g. Do colors even work that way?

(...and keep your planck unit, M theory, quantum field eigenstate, history-of-the-big-bang, age of the universe remarks away from this hypothetical example, please. You know what I mean when I describe the sky as either blue or not blue in the colloquial sense.)

Well of course it sounds ridiculous when you use an absurd analogy. A more reasonable analogy was something like muscle fatigue, or even mental fatigue, and it seems reasonable to believe that willpower can be depleted in a similar way. In fact, there were many published studies consistent with this hypothesis (as the abstract states).

I disagree.

Ego depletion refers to the idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up [1]. Previous studies have found that it is real. This study did a complex statistical analysis and found that they didn't have enough evidence to prove that it is real.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

To give some extra context: this is another study confirming the "replication crisis"[1] in psychology and social psychology (and other sciences as well, but these are the most prominent fields) where longstanding results that were thought to be rock-solid are falling like dominoes. Basically, the science backing, like, half of all TED talks and most episodes of Radiolab is crumbling before our eyes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

It seems like the least competent people to be designing and analysing psychology studies are psychology researchers. Statistics should be the number one skill required. The psychology part of these high-profile studies is usually trivial so that anyone with no psychology background could have thought of it, or at least easily understand it. I don't really see the need for a specialist psychology researcher to do this kind of work. Maybe we need a new field - "studies of interesting everyday phenomena" that's mostly about doing statistics right.

The irony is that a lot of statistics has really been developed in psychology and allied disciplines without even realizing. Meta-analysis, for example, really developed into its modern form in psychology, as a way of examining psychotherapy effects (even though the basic idea was around beforehand). Deep learning models too also have their roots in psychological models. They're called neural networks, but the models are more psychological than neurobiological per se, and have connections to other models that are firmly in the realm of psychological models.

I think you're being down voted because this might sound overly elitist, but to an extent I agree. As someone who considers himself relatively knowledgeable of statistics (coming from ML background) I have a hard time taking a lot of social science research seriously, because quite frankly, I am often left frustrated at the lack of rigor of their methodologies. Sample sizes are often way too small, and even more frequently, unacceptably biased to draw significant scientific conclusions. You also have the publication-bias problem which means that studies may be accepted as "legitimate" due to p-value hacking or because enough people were studying the problem that someone was bound to get a "statistically significant results" even when there was none.

Ego-depletion is mentioned, not always by name, in hundreds productivity and focus related articles and books published in the last 5 years or so.

Steve Jobs is often used as an example because he wore the same outfit to work every day, purportedly so he would not have to waste any crucial willpower early in the day on such a trivial task as choosing what to wear.

>> Steve Jobs is often used as an example because he wore the same outfit to work every day, purportedly so he would not have to waste any crucial willpower early in the day on such a trivial task as choosing what to wear.

That was to free up time and free himself from an extra decision. Mental exhaustion is not the same as ego depletion. The later claims that "self control" is a limited resource, but picking your outfit doesn't really require that anyway.

You have no idea how i really want to dress at work.

I almost qualified my statement with an exception for people like you ;-)

ego depletion is the idea that the more you stop yourself from doing things, the harder it gets to stop yourself. It sounds like they looked at a bunch of studies on this effect and concluded that it is not likely by doing some math on those studies.

Ego depletion isn't real.

To me, this is an interesting statement because it highlights the difference between true and useful.

For several years, since I read the book Willpower (an intro piece to ego depletion), I've meditated on the idea. I've decided that even if it's not scientifically true, it can be useful to me.

Some may see it as self-help tripe ("Eat your frogs in the morning!"), but it's a useful mental model for me to push myself to get stuff done sooner, rather than later, because I imagine myself not having the willpower later.

Your choice of word -- real -- was probably casual, but I think a better term would be "scientifically valid". There are many things that aren't replicable that have use to many humans.

Just because the effect isn't real doesn't mean the system can't be beneficial. There's hundreds of millions of people all over the world who benefit from a Abrahamic worldview.

The word superstition has negative connotations, but perhaps wrongly so.

Also, some aspects of ego depletion are grounded in science. Just because this particular model isn't valid, doesn't mean there's no valid model for ego depletion.

I started using animism yesterday to motivate me to do the dishes, viewing them as the physical embodiment of souls that I, their god, allowed to get moldy/rusty through neglect.

I think when we introduce choice/attention into the theory that we construct reality out of beliefs, emotions, culture (thought/behavior patterns), and intentions, it's possible to find all kinds of useful frameworks.

Maybe the idea of "scientific validity" needs to be adapted for subjective experiences constructed by us.

How do you think we could adapt that concept to subjective experiences? As I've gotten older (and learned to manage my mental state better), I've found great benefit from separating "scientifically true" and "useful to lead a good life".

I suppose that makes me a hypocrite in the same way that devoutly religious scientists are. But it makes my life more fulfilled, I experience less anxiety, etc.

It's an interesting ride, whatever it is.

I think one thing that needs to happen is a wider adoption of the pragmatic view described here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structure-scientific-theo...

Mainstream approaches to science are obsessively objective, denying the fact that everything we do is a subject experience. So many people learn the idea that things can only be true or false, as opposed to things being dependent on the lens through which they're viewed. We see the same sort of separation in our politics.

I think we need a framework for self-observation. Granted, we have systems in place designed to punish us for being ourselves, so that'll have to change, too.

If you want to learn how to work in a field dedicated to observing & documenting something, then first or concurrently learn to responsibly observe & document yourself. The goal is to maximize self-awareness, which I think everyone can benefit from in some way.

This looks very interesting, thanks!

I agree about the usefulness of such a framework. Subjective experiences draw optimizations (self-improvement), so by observing, we naturally are changed. This does not assume improvement; for that, we have to combine change with a fitness function.

You win a prize for the most bizarre story I'll read today.

That said, I think one thing you indicate here is helpful - life is a personal experience, and while some people may experience motivation from the exercise of willpower, others may feel they have their willpower 'broken down' over time.

I think the specific context of the experiment really does impact the results.

It is never as simple as: WILLPOWER [<3 <3 <3 </] HP [<3 <3 <3 <3]

etc.

I personally believe that a lot of religion falls onto the "useful" side of this divide. Which is why I have no reason to go out of my way to tell people that I think their religion is not literally true. If it works for them, great.

I think this also applies to beliefs like the 10,000 hour hypothesis. I strongly doubt it is true, but some people really like it as a motivational tool. I have no reason to burst their bubble.

The only time I am bothered is if people argue in favor of unverified beliefs to people who are seeking real truth, or especially if people try to legislate such beliefs.

I find it much more useful to break the world down into functions. Then we can simply ask in what contexts are these functions useful.

We can model religions as perceptual sets & then find their uses. I'm designing a religion of absurdity as a cultural experiment in teaching the models I'm developing and can testify to the usefulness of being able to find absurdity in everything. It also helps to not judge things beyond "Does this sustainably contribute to life or not?" I'm still trying to nail down the definitions, but the point is it doesn't matter what we believe, but what we do with those beliefs.

I have similarly softened towards people's religious and spiritual beliefs as I've aged.

Personally, I only get mad when someone tries to claim their belief is objectively true, or tries to proscriptively generalize it for others.

The question remains, then. Why is it that the same individual may perform (or not perform) an action while alert, but fail to their desired behavior when more tired, or hungry, or are otherwise distracted with effort toward maintaining another action state?

In other words, if someone is trying to stop eating candy, why do they draw from the candy bowl in some cases but not others?

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