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Jess_Riedel 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.
I still think that Caplan's position is dumb. It's not so much a question of whether his explanation fits the data (although I think Psychohistorian has shown that in this case it does not), it's that it's just plain weird to characterize the obsessive behavior done by people with OCD as a "preference". I mean, suppose that you were able to modify the explanation you've offered (that OCD people just have high preferences for certainty) in a way that escapes Psychohistorian's criticism. Suppose, for instance, you simply say "OCD people just have a strong desire for things happening a prime number of times". This would still be silly! OCD people clearly have a minor defect in their brains, and redefining "preference" won't change this.
Ultimately, this might just be a matter of semantics. Caplan may be using "preference" to mean "a contrived utility function which happens to fit the data", which can always be done so long as the behavior isn't contradictory. But this really isn't helpful. After all, I can say that the willow's "preference" is to lean in the direction of the wind and this will correctly describe the Willow's behavior. But calling it a preference is silly.
Thanks for the comment. This discussion has helped to clarify my thinking.