George Ainslie Quotes & Sayings

Are ordinary people really populations of interests rather than something more solid? It's disturbing to think of yourself as so fluid, so potentially unstable, held together only by the shifting influence of available rewards. It's like being told that atoms are mostly empty and wondering how they can bear weight. Yet the bargaining of interests in a society can produce highly stable institutions; perhaps that's also true of the internal interests created by a person's rewards. — George Ainslie

The awkwardness of getting reward in a well-off society is that the creation of appetite often requires undoing the work of satisfying appetite. — George Ainslie

will is a bargaining situation, not an organ. — George Ainslie

The conventional view of a person's self-command structure is definitely bureaucratic, on the model of a corporation or an army, where superior agents simply pass commands down to inferior ones. However, closer examination of corporations and
armies has shown that despite the establishment of hierarchical command structures, they remain marketplaces where officers must motivate rather than simply ordering behaviors. — George Ainslie

Ganging up on a short-range interest isn't the same thing as killing it. — George Ainslie

To focus on the objective price rather than on the subjective experience of consuming the good itself stabilizes my behvaior toward it. — George Ainslie