[colemannugent]

Basically, there was a theory that exercising self-control would "deplete" ones "self-control reserves". The idea was that exercising your self-control, to say avoid a junk food, would temporarily decrease your ability to resist that temptation again.

This paper reports that not only were they unable to verify any of the prior research into this so called "ego depletion" effect, but they found more persuasive evidence suggesting that the theory is false.

[krashidov]

This is reassuring. Every time someone told me this I figured it had to be bullshit. I think people used it as an excuse to make bad decisions.

[mizzao]

...and you're exemplifying confirmation bias right there, which is the whole reason this happened in the first place.

[inimino]

Having an opinion that is later vindicated is not the same thing as confirmation bias.

[pavement]

Gross. It sounds like a total failure to correctly model reality.

Like measuring how blue the sky is, based on how much "blue" is left in the universe. The idea they attempt to quantify is improperly described in terms of qualities. e.g. Do colors even work that way?

(...and keep your planck unit, M theory, quantum field eigenstate, history-of-the-big-bang, age of the universe remarks away from this hypothetical example, please. You know what I mean when I describe the sky as either blue or not blue in the colloquial sense.)

[tossaway1]

Well of course it sounds ridiculous when you use an absurd analogy. A more reasonable analogy was something like muscle fatigue, or even mental fatigue, and it seems reasonable to believe that willpower can be depleted in a similar way. In fact, there were many published studies consistent with this hypothesis (as the abstract states).

[pavement]

I disagree.