Thirteen The Central Banker of the Soul
Note:13@@@@@@@@@@La passione x il self control come passione sessuale. L indipendenza della banca centrale. Un modo x rendersi credibili. Le due vie: cervello e istinto. Inconscio come strategia utile. L istinto della vendetta é il banchiere centrale dell anima. No istinto no strategia. Time inconsistency.
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“Why is there something instead of nothing?”
Note:Primo mistero
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“Why do people lock their refrigerator doors?”
Note:Secondo mistero
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God’s will and the difficulty of dieting.
Note:Le soluzioni più comuni
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Midnight snacks have both costs and benefits.
Note:Perché aggiungere costi artificiosamente? Finestra rotta?
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What could be the point of making a good thing more difficult?
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comically elaborate schemes to force themselves to exercise.
Note:Altri esempi di mani legate. Ulisse
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None of which seems to make any sense.
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I eat hot fudge sundaes when I want them enough to justify the calories.
Note:D altronde... Modello molto più semplice.
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in the heat of the moment I’ll become irrational
Note:La risposta più facile. Vedi david friedman
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he refuses to accept a parking permit because he wants to force himself to bicycle to work.
Note:DF
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He explained that there are two kinds of human behavior: rational and irrational.
Note:Prevedere.l irrazionalitá é impossibile. Inutile xderci tempo. A meno che nn sia la nostra.
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insight into his personal brand of irrationality, so he can acknowledge it and plan around it.
Note:La MIA irrazionalitá
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If someone does something you don’t understand, you can either dismiss it as irrational or try to figure out its purpose.
Note:Il metodo. Le due vie. DF ha seguito oa prima via.
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The riddle is: how can it be rational to try to restrain yourself from making rational choices?
Note:La seconda via...I secondi fini.
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“Why did the man drink the motor oil? Because he had a taste for drinking motor oil!”
Note:Occhio alle spiegazioni bizzarre
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If you can explain anything, you’ve explained nothing.
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unlike a taste for drinking motor oil, a taste for self-control confers a reproductive advantage.
Note:Perché ci piace controllarci? Il gusto x il self control
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When you snack at midnight, you get most of the benefits, but your spouse (who has good reasons to care about your health and appearance) shares many of the costs.
Note:Esempio
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taste for self-restraint makes you more desirable
Note:Conseguenza...Segnalare questo gusto ci avvantagia
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That’s going to make it a little harder to attract a partner willing to stand by you in sickness and in health.
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you’ll do better on the marriage market if you have a visible instinct to restrain
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even though, for you, smoking is the right choice.
Note:Ma soprattutto....
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Now you might object that not everybody is looking for a mate. But everybody has ancestors who, at one time or another, looked
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From that point of view, a taste for self-control is no more mysterious than a taste for sex.
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In the classic American game of “chicken,”
Note:Due auto partono x un frontale. Perde chi svolta x primo
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the winning strategy is to rip out your steering column and make sure your opponent sees you do it.
Note:La libertá nn é una buona strategia.
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The freedom to swerve is the freedom to lose.
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national governments like to promise investors that the money supply will grow stably
Note:Altro prob di credibilitá
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Unfortunately, governments are perpetually tempted to break the promise
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To address this problem, most Western governments have intentionally curtailed their own freedom to control the money
Note:La coluzione
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The joy of recreational sex doesn’t feel like part of a drive to reproduce; nevertheless, it evolved because there was a time when those who liked sex were those who had offspring.
Note:Lag strategy
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Instead of making food and sex enjoyable, it could have endowed us with enough brainpower to recognize that food and sex are necessary
Note:La via alternativa
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that would have been more efficient—we wouldn’t eat foods that are bad for us, and we wouldn’t waste time and energy pursuing nonprocreative sex.
Note:La soluzione cervello
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need for a brain capable of calculating
Note:Il prezzo
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unlike eating and copulating, locking the refrigerator has to be an unconscious instinct in order to work.
Note:Ma c é di più.
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you’d predictably abandon it as soon as you’d found a mate.
Note:Se il self control fosse un calcolo.
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Humans invent central banks; Nature invents instincts.
Note:Garanzie d impegno duraturo
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Take, for example, the instinct for revenge.
Note:Esempio. La garanzia x la pace
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How could an instinct that is invariably self-destructive have survived the vagaries of natural selection?
Note:Si parla della vendetta. Delle faide infinte.
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the threat of revenge is an effective deterrent.
Note:L utilitá della vendetta
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It becomes credible only when it is driven by pure instinct—in
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you need a taste for revenge.
Note:Condizion necessaria.
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we signal our anger largely through muscle contractions that cannot be triggered voluntarily—thereby
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informing our neighbors that our emotions are genuine,
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A passion for revenge is the central banker of the soul.
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we call it the time-inconsistency problem—the
Note:Il battesimo dell economista.
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If you never interact with anyone, you’ll never have a problem with time inconsistency.
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future selves.
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imperfect altruism toward your future self can cause conflict in your soul.
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I avoid reading really good books, because it robs me of the pleasure of looking forward to them.
Note:Vizietto
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Dorothy Parker lamented that “I hate writing, but I love having written,”
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That suggests a new and different answer to my question about refrigerator locks.
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Finore abbiamo ipotizzato il piacere del self control
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According to Laibson, the conflict is not between you and your mate, but between you-today and you-tomorrow.
Note:Soluzione delle soggettivitá ultime
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Steven Pinker points out that understanding the origin of the Universe is not a terribly useful skill; it confers no reproductive advantage, so there’s no reason we should have evolved brains capable of thinking about such a question.
Big question
