According to the article "hundreds" of experiments showed an effect. Then it goes on to talk about the reproducibility crisis, but in this case it has been reproduced, no? At least, that's what the article itself says.

Link to actual debunk study is dead, but "it now appears that ego depletion could be completely bogus" seems too strong. Certainly in my own experience something like ego depletion is very real – maybe not exactly as described, but you do run out of bandwidth at some point, so to speak. One of the reasons this is hard to verify experimentally is that, in my personal experience, everything is fine up to a point, after which it all breaks down. You can't easily re-create that in an experiment.

In my experience, it seems very real as well.

The Wikipedia page has a pretty good rundown on the criticism and existing studies. From my understanding, it isn’t clear that the studies that have been done indicate any depletion effect at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_...

Anyone can make a decision without much thought, which most humans do at every moment of their existence.

Making informed decisions takes conscious thought, much less keeping the decisions equally informed. There's only so much of that you can do and humans are particularly bad at recognizing the subtle decline in quality of thought.

There's no question at all.

Doesn’t matter. Changing via willpower and context cues is quite difficult.

Identity change is the best, most lasting way.

What am I going to do with all my identical shirts now!