Wanting What We Want to Want

The idea in plain words

At midnight you want to watch one more video. You also want to be someone who goes to sleep. Both are desires, but they are not on the same level. The second is a desire about which of your desires should move you. When you follow the first against the second, you feel not that you got what you wanted but that something got the better of you.

Philosophers call these first-order and second-order desires. The distinction explains a familiar experience, and it raises a hard question for anyone who designs products or incentives: which of a person’s desires should they serve?

Where it comes from

In 1971 the philosopher Harry Frankfurt published “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” He argued that what distinguishes persons is the capacity for second-order desires, caring which desires move them. A person acts freely when the desire that moves them is one they want to be moved by. An addict who wants the drug and wants not to want it is unfree in a way that a willing addict is not.

Economists reached similar territory. Thomas Schelling wrote in 1978 about people as if they contained two selves contending for control, and about the strategies the far-sighted self uses to bind the impulsive one: putting the alarm clock across the room, buying cigarettes by the pack instead of the carton. The philosopher Jon Elster’s Ulysses and the Sirens (1979) took its title from the hero who had himself tied to the mast so that he could hear the sirens’ song without steering towards them.

What it does to the mind

The gap between orders of desire is felt as conflict, regret and, when the first-order desire wins repeatedly, a loss of self-respect. People manage it with commitment devices: rules, routines, public promises and environments arranged to make the endorsed choice easy. When an environment is designed to exploit first-order desires, such as infinite feeds, one-click purchases and auto-renewing subscriptions, the commitment devices fail and people feel used even when every choice was technically their own.

Where it shows up

The essay on recommendation feeds describes systems trained on behaviour that serve first-order desires efficiently and see second-order ones only through surveys and settings. The essay on social media describes the costs. The essay on subscription software describes people paying for gyms and services they meant to use, and the essay on payments describes how frictionless paying weakens the pause in which reflection happens.

What it asks of someone deciding

Measure endorsement, not only behaviour. Ask people whether they are glad they spent their time or money as they did, and treat the answer as seriously as usage data.

Offer commitment devices: limits, reminders, defaults people choose in advance. They build trust with the people who use them.

Notice when revenue depends on the gap between what customers do and what they wish they did. That revenue is fragile, and it shapes the organisation that earns it.