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I don't understand why it is unfalsifiable. Let's say I run the experiment and find that students who memorized seven digits were just as likely to choose cake

by MarkMc 13y ago

I don't understand why it is unfalsifiable. Let's say I run the experiment and find that students who memorized seven digits were just as likely to choose cake as students who memorized 2 digits. Wouldn't that be evidence against the theory that "Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources"? And if we get enough such evidence, couldn't we label the theory 'false'?

foobarbazqux 13y ago
No, because you can just explain it away by saying there's another rule specifically about cake that undoes the effect.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Everything has exceptions. Look at how balloons fall up! I do not understand why you think "increased cognitive load lowers willpower" is something that can't be objectively measured and shown to be true or false.
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    How do you measure cognitive load and willpower directly? I can only think of indirect methods.
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      Cognitive load is hard to measure, but you don't have to measure that part, only induce it. There are plenty of ways to get one group performing easy tasks without much thought, and another performing tasks with a lot of thought. With willpower you can be more clever. You don't actually care about an abstract willpower meter, you care about the application of willpower to make good choices. Application is downright trivial to measure in a narrow way: just provide a tempting choice. Do the same thing with as many different choices as you can think of and you've shown that willpower is impacted.
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        Your examples are indirect methods. For the claim "increased cognitive load lowers willpower" to be falsifiable you actually need to have meters with numbers on them that let you measure these things directly from the brain. How do we know the brain even has a willpower construct? I think you could probably substitute brain activity for cognitive load and measure it with MRI or something. edit: I realize that if all you are interested in is the phenomena that you've decided are proxies for our concepts of cognitive load and willpower, that this claim is falsifiable; the experiment did demonstrate causation there. But it's not falsifiable if you're saying that cognitive load in the brain causes willpower in the brain to go down. My primary concern is that the new hypothesis that is presented as the conclusion of the study is too far extrapolated from the experimental results, and untestable.
        Dylan16807 13y ago
        > But it's not falsifiable if you're saying that cognitive load in the brain causes willpower in the brain to go down. That depends on how you define 'in the brain', which seems like a waste of time. If I run for a while I can say I've 'run out of energy', and I can do show it objectively, but the question of whether the body has an 'energy construct' is semantic at its root. Another way of putting it is: treat willpower as a measurement, not as something to be measured. Sorry that I can't force that thought into English better. I hope you figure out what I meant.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        But your body does have an energy construct, in the form of fats and sugars, and we can measure them, and we can relate their levels to the amount of force you're able to exert. We know that these things provide energy because we can measure the heat produced when we oxidize them. Compare with willpower - where is the physical thing that we can measure? It might be there, but presently we have no way of knowing.
        Dylan16807 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    But in that case you can come over to my place and repeat your 2C experiment in front of me. Since we can both directly observe what's going on it's possible to reach objective agreement. But we can't observe the brain. It's like speculating about the source code of a program for which you only have inputs and outputs. At least this is true for this level of sophistication; in other experiments we can observe dopamine and associate it with pleasure.
    - MarkMc 13y ago
      For the record, here is grandparent question I deleted: > By that logic aren't most scientific theories unfalsifiable? For example, I might have a theory that the speed of light in is 600,000km per second. Your measurements suggest it's actually 300,000km per second. I then say, "I can just explain it away by saying there's another rule about the mirrors you used that halves the apparent speed of light".

by MarkMc 13y ago

foobarbazqux 13y ago

No, because you can just explain it away by saying there's another rule specifically about cake that undoes the effect.

Dylan16807 13y ago
Everything has exceptions. Look at how balloons fall up! I do not understand why you think "increased cognitive load lowers willpower" is something that can't be objectively measured and shown to be true or false.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  How do you measure cognitive load and willpower directly? I can only think of indirect methods.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Cognitive load is hard to measure, but you don't have to measure that part, only induce it. There are plenty of ways to get one group performing easy tasks without much thought, and another performing tasks with a lot of thought. With willpower you can be more clever. You don't actually care about an abstract willpower meter, you care about the application of willpower to make good choices. Application is downright trivial to measure in a narrow way: just provide a tempting choice. Do the same thing with as many different choices as you can think of and you've shown that willpower is impacted.
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      Your examples are indirect methods. For the claim "increased cognitive load lowers willpower" to be falsifiable you actually need to have meters with numbers on them that let you measure these things directly from the brain. How do we know the brain even has a willpower construct? I think you could probably substitute brain activity for cognitive load and measure it with MRI or something. edit: I realize that if all you are interested in is the phenomena that you've decided are proxies for our concepts of cognitive load and willpower, that this claim is falsifiable; the experiment did demonstrate causation there. But it's not falsifiable if you're saying that cognitive load in the brain causes willpower in the brain to go down. My primary concern is that the new hypothesis that is presented as the conclusion of the study is too far extrapolated from the experimental results, and untestable.
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        > But it's not falsifiable if you're saying that cognitive load in the brain causes willpower in the brain to go down. That depends on how you define 'in the brain', which seems like a waste of time. If I run for a while I can say I've 'run out of energy', and I can do show it objectively, but the question of whether the body has an 'energy construct' is semantic at its root. Another way of putting it is: treat willpower as a measurement, not as something to be measured. Sorry that I can't force that thought into English better. I hope you figure out what I meant.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        But your body does have an energy construct, in the form of fats and sugars, and we can measure them, and we can relate their levels to the amount of force you're able to exert. We know that these things provide energy because we can measure the heat produced when we oxidize them. Compare with willpower - where is the physical thing that we can measure? It might be there, but presently we have no way of knowing.
        Dylan16807 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  But in that case you can come over to my place and repeat your 2C experiment in front of me. Since we can both directly observe what's going on it's possible to reach objective agreement. But we can't observe the brain. It's like speculating about the source code of a program for which you only have inputs and outputs. At least this is true for this level of sophistication; in other experiments we can observe dopamine and associate it with pleasure.
  - MarkMc 13y ago
    For the record, here is grandparent question I deleted: > By that logic aren't most scientific theories unfalsifiable? For example, I might have a theory that the speed of light in is 600,000km per second. Your measurements suggest it's actually 300,000km per second. I then say, "I can just explain it away by saying there's another rule about the mirrors you used that halves the apparent speed of light".