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Psychohistorian comments on Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up? - Less Wrong
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I agree with your point here -- strongly. But I also think you're being unfair to Caplan. While his position is (I now realize) ridiculous, the example you gave is not.
His position would not be that they like doing those behaviors per se, but rather, they have a very strange preference that makes those behaviors seem optimal. Caplan would probably call it "a preference for an unusually high level of certainty about something". For example, someone with OCD needs to perceive 1 million:1 odds that they're hands are now clean, while normal people need only 100:1 odds.
So the preference is for cleanliness-certainty, not the act of hand-washing. To get that higher level of certainty requires that they wash their hands much more often.
Likewise, an OCD victim who has to lock their door 10 times before leaving has an unusually high preference for "certainty that the door is locked", not for locking doors.
Again, I don't agree with this position, but it's handling of OCD isn't that stupid.
Why is it specifically locking up ten times (it would actually need to be an odd number)? Someone with OCD will do things in, say, multiples of three. Under the certainty view, 14 times would be better than 12, but someone who needs to work in multiples of three would not find it preferable.
Because their utility function (as believed by Caplan) is not strictly increasing in the number of times you do it. Utility goes up as you approach the desired level of certainty (such as 1,000,000:1 odds), then you hit diminishing returns.
Just like how you like clean hands, but will be okay with only being 99% sure they're clean enough.
As I understand it, a person (or at least some people) with OCD will need to, say, lock a door precisely nine times. If he somehow locked it 11 times, he'd be very distressed. It's like I'm happy when I'm 99.9% sure my hands are clean, but miserable when I'm 99.99% or 99 % sure they're clean. It doesn't make sense. That's not a preference for cleaner hands, or more locked doors. It's, gasp, crazy.
Not to mention some of this behaviour is binary, like locking doors or turning on lights. No matter how many times I flip a switch or turn a lock, if it's odd, it'll be locked/on, and if it's even, it'll be unlocked/off. I just don't think most OCD behaviour actually follows patterns that "additional certainty" would predict.
i have some experience with OCD and i think a good way of defining it would be: people with OCD repeat their compulsive rituals as a form of negative reinforcement. when a ritual is interrupted or unable to be completed in some way, the person will usually suffer a tremendous amount of anxiety. this anxiety is relieved upon completion of the ritual making it a strong source of negative reinforcement and causing that person to repeat it in the future. while the initial [i]basis[/i] of the ritual is "crazy" or irrational (obviously locking a door nine times serves no practical purpose in of itself), the [i]use[/i] of the ritual is not - it removes or prevents anxiety.
Hey, take it up with pjeby if you think you understand the issue better, it's well beyond my pay grade at this point. He linked to a peer-reviewed paper substantiating the certainty thesis.
You should at least consider the possibility that OCDers really do just need to be more sure, and the number-based rituals are simply the result of them having noticed that that number comforted them in the past, and then cargo-cultishly inferring that the number is somehow special.