Akrasia is fake and not real

You just don't actually want that stuff

Akrasia—weakness of will—is a concept in ancient Greek philosophy that I’m going to ignore because I have barely any idea what ancient Greek philosophers had to say about it, in favor of responding to a cluster of LessWrong posts about it.¹

The string I most associate with the concept of akrasia is, “I want to, but ugh…”

I want to go to the gym, but ugh, I just don’t feel like it.

I want to have written this post, but ugh, that means I would have to write it.

I want to read more novels, but ugh, my phone is just much more engaging.

Get the fuck out of here. No you don’t.

Three second historical context

A quick glance at the AI overview for the term suggests to me that Aristotle considered akrasia to be a real phenomenon—you know the right thing to do, but you fail to do it out of passion or weakness. Meanwhile Socrates thought that it was impossible for someone to know the right thing to do and choose not to do it—so akrasia is just ignorance. You don’t actually know what the right thing to do is, and that’s why you don’t do it.²

Well, I’m with Socrates here, at least in spirit. “I want X, but…” is a nonsensical statement. It is literally contradictory.

In a sense, all “I want” statements are either trivial or false, unless they are statements that are actually actions—for example, informing the McDonald’s cashier that you want some fries.

Rationalists—people who are notoriously intelligent but low in conscientiousness, which is why they use their considerable intelligence to write blog posts instead of to do rocket surgery—often write about akrasia as a problem of getting yourself to do stuff that you don’t want to do. I think that’s fine. Sometimes you have to do stuff that you don’t want to do, or else you get audited or fail your degree or all your teeth fall out. I myself have next to zero ability to do things I don’t want to do, so figuring out some way to want to do the things I need to is perfectly useful for me.

But what really grinds my gears is many people’s persistent delusion that they want things that they don’t actually want. It grinds my gears because it seems to cause so much unnecessary suffering.

Case study

Many mornings, I wake up and—like many people—immediately reach for my phone to get my fix of stupid internet bullshit, blasting my soft brain tissue with Content before I’ve even managed to slonk down my prescription amphetamine salts. Sometimes I catch up on Substacks and answer work messages, but sometimes I just scroll Twitter for like an hour. Sometimes two.

Large swathes of people do this, and large swathes of people feel terribly guilty about it. “I want to just get out of bed in the morning as soon as I wake up, but…”

Well, not me. My bed is cozy and comfy and often contains another person I can sleepily cuddle while scrolling. Right now I’m pretty into my job so I do this way less often, but when my job is meh or I slept poorly and I don’t really feel like starting my day, I really do want to be laying around cozy and warm and playing on my phone.

And given that I want to do this, and therefore I will do it, it is obviously preferable to do this while wholeheartedly enjoying it, instead of anxiously pretending not to want it in order to appease my inner Gestapo officer of socially acceptable desires.

Existential Kink had the right of it. Getting what you want is a lot more fulfilling if you actually let yourself enjoy it. And if you don’t let yourself enjoy it, you won’t pursue it any less ardently—you’ll just get all fucked up and twisted about it on the way.

More case studies

Sometimes we want things that we prefer not to want, and it is in our interests to find some way to not want them. Existential Kink is all about this and a full review of that book is a blog post on its own.³ The canonical Existential Kink example is: sometimes you want to feel negative emotions, so you continuously put yourself in situations that will cause them, creating serious problems for yourself and your loved ones. It’s in your interest to not want that anymore, and the book has some suggestions for how to achieve that goal.

Or more prosaically—maybe you really want to eat nothing but Twinkies for every meal, but you’re diabetic and this will swiftly kill you. Definitely this is a problem. It is not always wise to do exactly what you want, and you should really have some strategies for doing something else.

Other times, though, what you actually want contains signal that you should not ignore. I used to live near a fabulous climbing gym. It was brightly lit, pleasant to occupy, full of many varied colorful pieces of plastic to touch, and had an excellent sauna in the showers. I went all the time. Then I moved, and the climbing gym near my new apartment was smaller, dingier, quite unpleasant to walk to, and had no sauna. I kept schlepping to it out of habit for a few months before realizing—hey, wait a minute! This sucks! What am I even doing here? So I stopped, but it would have been better for me to stop much sooner.

Do I “want” to still be going to the gym? Obviously not. Further—”should” I be going to the gym, given that I don’t want to, and that counterfactual uses of my time are clearly of more value to me? I contend that I should not.

Mutatis mutandi all the other stuff you “want” to do but seem to not pursue very ardently because of akrasia. Your PhD. Your unfinished novel. Your situationship.

Situationships are another locus of suffering that ocurrs due to basic confusion over what a “want” even is. I recently had a relationship end rather brutally, and one of the things he said to me, months later, was roughly this: “I want to be with you, but we just shouldn’t be together.”

What nonsense! This, finally, was what broke that relationship’s hold over me, having the contradiction revealed to me so clearly. If he had wanted to be with me, he would be. Simple as. No need to twist myself into pretzels over it.

Why Prayer Is Not Answered

I conclude by quoting my very favorite essay, Why Prayer Is Not Answered, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which I think everyone should read:

There is a very old spiritual law that says that you can have absolutely anything you want -- but you must know how to ask for it, you must want it more than you want anything else, and nothing must be allowed to stand in its way. […]

The laws by which this process works are narrow and fairly rigid, and the side-tracks that can divert you from it are many. The main reason that keeps people from getting what they pray for, though, is simple: They don’t want it enough.

They think they do; but when it comes to the crunch, there is something else they want more. […]

Let me give you an example: a parable.

A young student has been working four years for his college degree. Yet all those years, he says, he has dreamed of travel. One day he states his dream.

“I want to travel in Europe more than anything in the world,” he says. “All my life I have dreamed of it. I lie awake nights just wanting to get to Europe.”

“Is that so?” says the kindly stranger. “God must have sent you to me, for here in my hand I have a plane ticket to Europe which expires tonight, and other business keeps me from using it. Here, young friend, take this ticket, pack your toothbrush, hurry to the airport and catch the plane which leaves in twenty minutes, and your prayer is answered.”

Does the young man go?

Maybe one time in fifty, he does. More often, “Oh, if I only could,” he says, “but tomorrow is my final examination, and the week after that is my graduation.”

“But I thought you wanted to go to Europe more than anything in the world.”

“Yes, but I’ve worked so hard for my diploma . . ..”

And in the end he does not go. He thought he wanted a trip to Europe, but what he really wanted was a trip to Europe and his education.

Now be clear about one thing: I am not blaming this young man, except for not being clear in his own mind about his goals.

Bradley is making a related but slightly different point than I am—you should really read the whole thing—but what I want highlight that last part. The problem is not in the desires themselves needing to be corrected (an impossible task), but in self-knowledge—something that is available to you at any time.

You probably shouldn’t do exactly what you want all of the time. But you also shouldn’t pretend to want things that you don’t. You will only confuse yourself.

Save yourself the emotional wheel-spinning. If you want it, you’ll soon have it. And if you have it—consider what that implies about your wants.

1. Which I read several years ago. And will I reread them to make sure this post is actually arguing against a position that somebody holds? No, I don’t want to. I want to make a vaguely adjacent point with an inflammatory title. So that’s what I’m going to do.

2. This sounds approximately congruent with what I remember reading in Agnes Callard’s Open Socrates so I’m not going to look into it any further.

3. This one by Sasha Chapin is pretty good so maybe just go read that one.