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Alicorn comments on Experiential Pica - Less Wrong
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Comments (109)
Not food. Pica is by definition an appetite for non-food; best-case scenario, they're eating actual iron objects or iron-rich dirt or something.
Not knowing what classes of activities exist is a handicap, but we can make guesses - exercise is plausibly one, and one that looks promising for other reasons. I suspect that creative activities, possibly including baking, is another, and there's some evidence that sunlight and fresh air are splendid things to have, so going outside might be useful too.
Exercise and sunlight and so on are definitely good for us. But why do you think they're particularly linked to akrasia? I know they're linked to various mood disorders and so on...
I guess I just don't understand why you're proposing this hypothesis and not another. Is is just the analogy with pica, on the level of "akrasia is a craving to do or not-do X, so maybe its cause is doing or not-doing some unrelated Y"? Does this explain/retrodict some known facts about akrasia that I missed? Or is it just a direction of investigation for now?
I can only propose hypotheses I think of.
It's mostly just a direction of investigation, based on a known thing the brain can do - when some Y is is needed, the brain is known to sometimes ask for unrelated X, which does not eliminate the root problem (need for Y). I'm saying that Tetris et. al. may be the Y in a pattern like this.