How much willpower do we want to exercise?

Where does a person get the willpower to read a book with the title, ‘Willpower: Rediscovering our Greatest Strength’? A book with such a title could not help reminding readers of their past failures in exercise of willpower. However, I didn’t find the book by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney an ordeal to read. Rather than making me feel more guilty, the book left me feeling that some of my past failures might perhaps be understandable under the circumstances.

The authors discuss research findings which suggest that in the short term an individual’s willpower is limited and is depleted by exertion. When your willpower is depleted you are more likely to become frustrated and to act impulsively. This means that the best time to make changes in your life is when there are few other demands being made on you, so you can allocate most willpower to the task.

The book provides some good advice about how to deal with procrastination and the anxiety that can be associated with it. For example, once you make a definite plan to do the things that you have been procrastinating about, you will stop fretting about them. If you find yourself procrastinating by substituting other activities for the activity that should have highest priority, try the ‘nothing’ alternative. Set aside time to be spent either on the high priority activity or doing nothing.

The book also has good advice on how to deal with temptations. Postponement can work better than trying to deny yourself altogether. Where necessary, use pre-commitment. Set bright lines – clear unmistakeable boundaries that you expect your future self to respect. Monitor performance regularly and don’t forget to reward yourself for reaching goals.

One of the points that came through to me in the book is how careful we need to be in making judgements about the ability of other people to exercise willpower. For example, the book suggests that it is often a mistake to attribute obesity to lack of willpower. Paradoxically, many people who are over-weight or obese have in the past exercised a great deal of willpower in following crash diets that have resulted in rapid weight loss. The problem is that when subjected to diets that simulate the effects of famine, human bodies tend to respond by holding on to every fat cell they can.

My main reason for reading the book – apart from the feeling that my own willpower could do with some improvement – was to see what light it sheds on arguments for government interventions to remove temptations that are bad for individual health and well-being. This issue is not discussed directly but, as the subtitle implies, the book argues strongly that individuals have the potential to exercise a great deal of self-control if they know how and want to do so.

This raises the question of how much self-control each of us wants to exercise over our impulses. While reading the book I found myself thinking that I don’t actually want to remove from my life all temptations for impulsive behaviour that I might later regret. I feel that I may obtain some satisfaction from leaving myself somewhat vulnerable to impulsiveness. For example, while I accept that there would probably be health benefits in restricting my (already moderate) alcohol intake to one glass of wine per day, that is a bright line that I don’t want to draw – at least, not yet!

I suspect that a lot of other people think as I do about such matters. We feel that it is appropriate for the control we exercise over ourselves to be somewhat lenient. Some of the boundaries we set are deliberately flexible, for example with allowances for special occasions. We don’t want our lives to be totally governed by bright lines. The last thing we want is a paternalistic government that seeks to help us by taking the temptations out of our lives.
Paternalists tend to respond: ‘It's not about you. Our aim is to help vulnerable people’.  

So why don’t they help vulnerable people to develop the inner strength they need to deal with their addictions and leave the rest of us to run our own lives for ourselves?

Should the 'constructal law' restore our faith in progress?

‘Everything that moves, whether animate or inanimate, is a flow system. All flow systems generate shape and structure in time to facilitate this movement across a landscape filled with resistance (for example, friction). The designs we see in nature are not the result of chance. They arise naturally, spontaneously, because they enhance access to flow in time.’

The quote is a statement of Adrian Bejan’s ‘constructal law’ and is from ‘Design in Nature, How the constructal law governs evolution in biology, physics, technology and social organization’ (2012, p 3). Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering, has co-authored the book with Peder Zane, an assistant professor of communications.

A basic point that the authors are making is that it is no accident that treelike patterns emerge throughout nature, e.g. trees, river systems, lightning bolts, blood capillaries and dendrites of neurons in brains. The treelike pattern is an effective design for facilitating flows – both from areas to points (as in the flow of water through the root system of a tree to its trunk) and from points to areas (as in the flow of water from the trunk of a tree to its leaves).

When I began to read the book I felt as though I had always believed that the design of flow systems in nature would evolve to facilitate the flow of the stuff that is flowing through them. It seemed intuitively obvious that that should be so, even though I could not claim to have thought much about the matter previously. (In fact, insofar as I had previously thought about it I would probably have been inclined to the view that the evolution of design in nature must be largely random because it is largely a consequence of random events.) After reading a few pages of the book, the main question in my mind was how the authors would justify the claim in the sub-title that the constructal law governs the evolution of technology and social organization as well as natural phenomena.

It seems to me that the authors’ application of the constructal law to technology and social organization is analogous to the application of the theory of evolution to economics (evolutionary economics) and culture (e.g. Hayek’s theory of group selection). The flow perspective actually helps to promote an understanding of social evolutionary processes as being about much more than just survival of the fittest – whether in terms of crude social Darwinism, or more sophisticated concepts relating to survival of ideas, firms, forms of economic and social organization, and social norms.

In my view the authors make a strong case that the accumulation of scientific knowledge can be viewed as a process in which the stuff that is flowing (new ideas) determines design (the organization of knowledge). In their words:

‘Indeed, all the great discoveries, from Newton’s laws of motion to the laws of thermodynamics, didn’t just tell us something new, they organized and streamlined our knowledge’.

The authors explain that scientific discoveries allow disorganized pieces of empirical information to be replaced by summarizing statements (laws). They suggest:

‘A hierarchy of statements emerges naturally because it facilitates the flow of information. It is an expression of the never-ending struggle of all flow systems to design and re-design themselves’ (p 163).

The application of the constructal law to social organization provides insights similar to those provides by the ‘new institutional economics’.  Institutional designs tend to evolve to facilitate transactions – i.e. to reduce transactions costs (which are analogous to friction in physical systems). Unfortunately, the authors don’t provide an explicit discussion of path dependency – in particular the potential for some societies to remain locked in to inferior institutions involving high transactions costs and poor social outcomes. Perhaps a flow perspective provides us with greater grounds for optimism that all people suffering under inferior institutions will eventually obtain the freedom they need to better their condition.

So, should the constructal law restore our faith in progress? The constructal law has not changed my view that it is better to think in terms of conditions for progress than faith in progress (see my last post). We can only be optimistic about progress if conditions are favourable. It makes more sense to ask whether the constructal law provides grounds for greater optimism than to ask whether it should restore our faith in progress. It seems to me that the constructal law provides an appropriately optimistic frame of reference for thinking about progress. Progress isn’t inevitable, but we have strong grounds to view it as a natural or normal phenomenon.

Postscript:
Adrian Bejan has responded as follows:

'Thank you very much for reading our book Design in Nature and writing about it.

I can respond to your call for "how the authors would justify the claim in the sub-title that the constructal law governs the evolution of technology and social organization as well as natural phenomena".

This is actually discussed in ch. 10, and it pivots on Fig. 57. The long version of this response is in the review article published last fall in Physics of Life Reviews (read the comments on Figs. 1, 5, and 20-24.

In our book Design in Nature, the justification is best illustrated by the story of how nature (not man) invented the wheel (Ch.4). Technology is all the contrivances that we make and attach to ourselves to in order to move farther, faster, more efficiently, and for longer (i.e. to live longer). This is no different than the morphological changes that stick as the river basin evolves

So, everything that looks good and we adopt and we acquire is helpful in this constructal flow direction, which is for the whole to flow more easily.. It sounds simple, and it is. Think about the evolution of the technology for power generation, for example. The same with transportation technology, science, language, communications, and currency, and bank tellers, and English as the global language. They all help us go with the flow.'

The article to which Professor Bejan refers in Physics of Life Reviews is also available at the constructal theory web site.

Does belief in technological progress have to involve faith?

In an essay entitled ‘The Idea of Progress’ (published in 1979) Robert Nisbet, an American sociologist, suggested:

 ‘Disillusionment with science and technology is very much a part of the intellectual landscape, and it would be a rash soul indeed who declared it a purely peripheral and transitory thing’.

It would probably be fair to say that disillusionment with science and technology is now fairly common among the general populace of high income countries. Data from World Values Surveys conducted in 2005-08 show that the percentages who completely agree with the proposition that science and technology are making our lives healthier, easier and more comfortable are only around 14% in Australia, 11% in the US and 6% in Japan. The corresponding percentages are much higher for countries with lower incomes: 31% for Mexico and China and 40% for Indonesia.

Nisbet argued that the idea of progress was born of Greek imagery and is central to Christianity with its emphasis on hope - to be given gratification in this world as well as the next. He observes that rationalist-secular confidence, once so great in Western society, has been fast-diminishing as a result of boredom with the goods, material and psychic, provided by modernity as well as disillusionment with science and technology. In his concluding paragraph he speculates that a renascence of religion might ‘fill the vacuum brought on by those elements of modernity … and with this, a shoring-up of the idea of progress from past to future’.

Nisbet seems to be suggesting that belief in progress involves faith. It arose from religious faith and may return to those roots as enthusiasm for science and technology wanes.

    

Does belief in progress have to involve faith? For a couple of centuries in western countries enthusiasm for technological progress did involve faith. It was akin to religious faith, with doctrines about the inevitability of progress – in some accounts even according to laws of evolution or laws of history. It is possible, however, to believe that, on balance technological advances are beneficial, without having much confidence that they will necessarily make our lives healthier, easier and more comfortable.

Data in the World Values surveys on whether it would be a good or bad thing if there was more emphasis on technology in future may reflect a widespread belief that, on balance, technological advances are beneficial. Despite their reluctance to agree completely that technology is making their lives better, only a small percentage of people in high income countries say that more emphasis on technology would be a bad thing – and the percentages don’t differ in any obvious way from those for low income countries. (The relevant percentages for Australia, US, Japan, Mexico, China and Indonesia are 6%, 7%, 5%, 7%,1% and 14% respectively.)

It seems to me that Karl Popper’s institutional theory of scientific and technological progress provides an appropriate framework in which to consider the possibility of progress. The basis of Popper’s theory is that there are ‘conditions for progress’ and hence conditions under which progress may be arrested. Popper emphasized that science is based on free competition and thought:

‘If the growth of reason is to continue, and human rationality to survive, then the diversity of individuals and their opinions, aims, and purposes must never be interfered with (except in extreme cases where political freedom is endangered). Even the emotionally satisfying appeal for a common purpose, however excellent, is an appeal to abandon all rival moral opinions and the cross-criticisms and arguments to which they give rise. It is an appeal to abandon rational thought’.

Popper concluded:

‘The mainspring of evolution and progress is the variety of the material which may become subject to selection. So far as human evolution is concerned it is the 'freedom to be odd and unlike one's neighbour'--'to disagree with the majority, and go one's own way'. Holistic control, which must lead to the equalization not of human rights but of human minds, would mean the end of progress’ (‘The Poverty of Historicism’, 1957, Chapter IV).

How does the United Nations view social progress?

I have previously expressed the view on this blog that if progress is to have any meaning from a public policy perspective it must mean movement toward a good society or movement from a good society to a better society. The improvement of society can, of course, be referred to as ‘social progress’.

When I did an internet search on ‘social progress’, the second item listed was the United Nations Declaration on Social Progress and Development adopted in 1969. This Declaration stands in stark contrast to the resolution sponsored by Bhutan and adopted in July last year calling on Member States ‘to pursue public policy steps that would better capture the importance of pursuing happiness and well-being in development’.

   

As might be expected, the 1969 UN declaration begins by asserting the value of humans and the rights of everyone to enjoy the fruits of social progress. Without attempting to define social progress it then goes on to assert that social progress requires the ‘full utilization of human resources’ and giving everyone the ‘right to work’. The declaration then proclaims the importance of economic growth to social progress:

‘The rapid expansion of national income and wealth and their equitable distribution among all members of society are fundamental to all social progress, and they should therefore be in the forefront of the preoccupations of every State and Government’.

I guess the authors were trying to make the point that growth in productivity and technological progress are central to meeting the aspirations of people to improve their living standards. In the preamble to ‘Part II Objectives’ it is asserted that ‘progress and development shall aim at the continuous raising of the material and spiritual standards of living of all members of society’. The recognition of spiritual needs is interesting, but the authors gave no hint of what they meant by ‘spiritual standards of living’. Considered as a whole, the document has the appearance of having been drafted by economic planners to foster greater recognition of their own importance.

Perhaps I should view the UN Declaration on Social Progress as a product of its times and be glad that the UN has moved on. I can’t help feeling, however, that the wording of the document is particularly crass, even given views that were prevalent at the time the document was written.

If the authors had wanted to emphasize the aspirations that people have for improvement of their material living standards it would not have been hard for them to come up with an appropriate definition of social progress in those terms. For example, they could have written a definition, along the lines I have drafted below, based on words used by Ludwig von Mises, leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, in his book ‘Theory and History’, which was published in 1957:

Most humans want to live and to prolong their lives; they want to be healthy and to avoid sickness; they want to live comfortably and not to exist on the verge of starvation. Advance toward these goals means progress, the reverse means retrogression.

If the authors had set their sights a little higher they might even have been able to benefit from the thoughts of another famous Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek:

‘In one sense, civilization is progress and progress is civilization. The preservation of the kind of civilization that we know depends on the operation of forces which, under favourable conditions, produce progress. If it is true that evolution does not always lead to better things, it is also true that without the forces which produce it, civilization and all we value – indeed almost all that distinguishes man from beast – would neither exist nor could long be maintained’ (‘Constitution of Liberty’, 1960, 39-40).

Hayek saw progress as a process of learning, the cumulative growth of knowledge which when achieved becomes available for the benefit of all. He wrote:

‘It is through this free gift of the knowledge acquired by the experiments of some members of society that general progress is made possible, that the achievements of those who have gone before facilitate the advance of those who follow’ (p 43).