I've been following this through the lens of Beeminder (and "Quantified Self") -- taking away the idea that if you know your own willpower better, you can do ma

I've been following this through the lens of Beeminder (and "Quantified Self") -- taking away the idea that if you know your own willpower better, you can do magic tricks like "only promise what you can deliver on" and "incrementally ramping up your own willpower" After looking up this concept of Ego Depletion, which seemed like a new idea I haven't heard of before, when I clicked this discussion today... I can see it's basically the same idea. But what I hadn't considered is that the same ideas are able to be used by, eg. advertisers! While my goal of study in this field is making the most of my own efforts, there is someone out there looking at the same charts, trying to figure out exactly where is the right place to put their advertisement to maximize the effect it has on me, even going as far as to get me to buy something that I wouldn't have bought otherwise. That's just fascinating. (Alternatively, that's a horrifying idea...)