The ego depletion literature is sort of a minefield. The lack of replicability of the classic ego depletion phenomenon is pretty clear but (like a lot of psycho

The ego depletion literature is sort of a minefield. The lack of replicability of the classic ego depletion phenomenon is pretty clear but (like a lot of psychological phenomena) there tends to be nitpicking about definitions, and strawmen disproofs. The ego depletion idea specifically refers to the idea that exercising self-control leads to self-control fatigue, which leads to a rebound effect. No doubt there's self-control and attention in climbing, but I think another phenomenon of "attentional focus leads to fatigue which leads to poor decision" or "physical exertion leads to fatigue which leads to poor decision" is not specifically an ego depletion phenomenon. I'm not really trying to be pedantic, more thinking out loud about how phenomena that seem closely related and similar can get dismissed because of a very narrow definition of something. There's also something to be said for lab versus real-world tests of ego depletion. I've always suspected that whatever you can do in a lab ethically is not ever going to be a real-world test of ego depletion. If nothing else, it happening in the context of some study suggests that people know there's an "out", and anything that would really induce fatigue to moral temptation probably wouldn't be approved by an IRB, at least easily. I've always been skeptical of the original ego depletion phenomena as outlined in the original studies, in part because they never seemed to rule out alternative explanations well, but also have guessed that there's some variant phenomenon that is similar and explains similar things better. I also don't agree with the author that the ego depletion idea is "silly". Everyone knows about fatigue, and the idea it could be applied to temptation isn't unreasonable (on the face of it, this is how a lot of people often explain binging). Something can be incorrect but reasonable.