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[Caithness]

I like to buy everything with my credit card and then pay the entire balance off at the end of the month. It's more convenient than carrying cash, and I get a nice 1% cash-back reward thing on every purchase to boot.

[Thad]

Relevant: studies show willpower is depletable.  IE if you resist temptation, you will be less likely to resist the next temptation.

That's something that's always seemed true to me intuitively.  I think my "indulgence" budget is just as important as my financial one in staying out of debt -- if I buy a burrito now, it'll be easier not to buy a new TV.  (If I were obese instead of poor, the reverse would probably be true -- it would be wiser to spend the money on the TV and save up my willpower to resist Mexican takeout.)

[Norondor]

pretty sure white wolf proved this years ago imo

[Brentai]

Hey guys I think I just invented the Sex Toy Diet.

[Smiler]

I guess technically dildos are probably low in calories but I think that is more due to them usually being inedible.

[Büge]

Hey guys I think I just invented the Sex Toy Diet.

There is a doujin about that.

[Mongrel]

Too bad that study didn't say anything about building up willpower. Because God knows I already don't deny myself much. The only real trick is to convince yourself you don't want [X] in the first place.

[Brentai]

You build it up with graduated exercises, just like anything else.

[R^2]

It helps if you can't afford nice things anyway.

[Thad]

Unless you have a credit card.

[Mongrel]

You build it up with graduated exercises, just like anything else.

The study Thad linked seemed to contradict that.

[Brentai]

Have you ever exercised before?

[Thad]

Finally, what about the possibility of strengthening the willpower “muscle”? Here, the research is complicated. While one line of research has found reason to think that drained willpower can be restored in the short term—by taking a walk in nature or watching a humorous video, for instance—studies on how to strengthen the willpower muscle in the long term are far less conclusive. This second line of research seems to be more promising in children than in adults. As Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota, who has done extensive research on willpower, put it, “There might be something of a developmental sweet spot.” In twelve U.S. states, a program called Tools of the Mind is explicitly aimed at improving willpower functions in prekindergarten and kindergarten children.

So basically while it sounds intuitively true that you can build up willpower with practice, the research isn't there (yet?) except in the case of children of a certain age.

[Pacobird]

Always sort of thought of it not so much as willpower being a finite resource as it is guilt having dminishing returns.

[Mongrel]

It came up earlier, so I just wanted to mention that The White House dismissed the 14th Amendment option some time ago.