Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Slack matters more than any outcome, published by Valentine on December 31, 2022 on LessWrong.

About a month ago Ben Pace invited me to expand on a point I'd made in a comment.

The gist is this:

Addictions can cause people to accomplish things they wouldn't accomplish otherwise.

But if the accomplishment were worthwhile, why would the addiction be helpful? Why wouldn't the clarity that it's worthwhile be enough?

I postulate that the reason is a kind of metaphorical heaviness in culture. A particular structural tendency to eat slack.

So I think it'd be net better to let some worthwhile things go unaccomplished in favor of lifting the metaphoric burden. Creating more slack.

And I'd even say that this is the main plausible pathway I see for creating a great future for humanity. I don't think we can get there by focusing on making worthwhile things happen.

I felt inspired to write up an answer. Then I spent a month working on it. I clarified my thinking a lot but slid into a slog of writing. Kind of a perfectionist thing.

So I'm scrapping all that. I'm going to write a worse version, since the option is (a) a quickly hacked together version or (b) nothing at all.

Addictions

My main point isn't really about addictions, but I need to clarify something about this topic anyway. They're also a great example cluster.

When I say "addiction", I'm not gesturing at a vague intuition. I mean a very particular structure:

There's some unwelcome experience that repeatedly arises.

There's a behavior pattern that can temporarily distract the person in question from the unwelcome experience.

But the behavior pattern doesn't address the cause of the unwelcome experience arising in the first place.

So when someone engages in the distraction, it provides temporary relief, but the unwelcome experience arises again — and now the distraction is a little more tempting. A little more habit-forming. When that becomes automatic, it can feel like you're trapped inside it, like you're powerless against some behavior momentum.

Which is to say, this structure eats slack.

Some rapid-fire examples:

Caffeine dependency becomes an addiction when you autopilot react to the withdrawal symptoms by reaching for another cup of coffee.

Alcoholism as an addiction is often (usually? always?) about avoiding emotional experiences. Since the causes of the emotions don't go away, sobriety can result in the unwelcome experience arising, which the alcoholic knows how to numb away.

I have a long-standing habit of feeling kind of listless, lonely, like I should be doing something more or different with my life but I'm not quite sure what it is or that I can do it. If I don't pay attention when that sensation/emotion/thought cluster arises, I find myself on my computer scrolling social media or watching YouTube or Netflix. Putting up blockers to these sites both (a) makes me good at disabling the blockers and (b) makes things like porn or Minesweeper more tempting.

I'm not saying that all addictions are like this. I can't think of any exceptions off the top of my head, but that might just be a matter of my lack of creativity or a poor filing system in my mind.

I'm saying that there's this very particular structure, that it's quite common, and that I'm going to use the word "addiction" to refer to it.

And yeah, I do think it's the right word, which is why I'm picking it. Please notice the framing effect, and adjust yourself as needed.

Imposing an idea

The main thing I want to talk about is a generalization of rationalization, in the sense of writing the bottom line.

Caffeine dependency

When I grab a cup of coffee for a pick-me-up, I'm basically asserting that I should have more energy than I do right now.

This is kind of odd if you think about it. If I found out my house were on fire, I wouldn't feel too tired to deal with...