Breakdown of Will Quotes

“will is a bargaining situation, not an organ.”
― George Ainslie, Breakdown of Will

“The conventional view of a person's self-command structure is definitely bureaucratic, on the model of a corporation or an army, where superior agents simply pass commands down to inferior ones. However, closer examination of corporations and
armies has shown that despite the establishment of hierarchical command structures, they remain marketplaces where officers must motivate rather than simply ordering behaviors.”
― George Ainslie, Breakdown of Will

“Principles of choice, or “personal rules,” represent self-enforcing contracts with your future motivational states; such contracts depend on your seeing each current choice as a precedent that predicts how you’re apt to choose among similar options in the future. Short-range interests evade personal rules by proposing exceptions that might keep the present case from setting a precedent. The will is a recursive process that bets the expected value of your future self-control against each of your successive temptations.”
― George Ainslie, Breakdown of Will

“However difficult it is to study nonlinear systems, such systems probably determine the most important features of choice. As one chaos theorist remarked, "nonlinear systems" may be about as extensive as "non-elephant biology."2”
― George Ainslie, Breakdown of Will

“Ganging up on a short-range interest isn't the same thing as killing it.”
― George Ainslie, Breakdown of Will