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army1987 comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong
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In that case, wouldn't you say that anyone who suffers from akrasia (which is pretty much everyone at some time) has a failure of understanding on a gut level? My subconscious mind doesn't seem to understand that it's a bad idea to eat a box of pizza every night; so I have to rely on my conscious mind to take charge, or at least try to.
Occasionally even health-conscious people eat stuff like pizza, which is arguably the equivalent of buying the occasional lottery ticket. In each case, the conscious mind is aware that one is doing something counter-productive. In the case of a lottery ticket, one is enjoying the fantasy of being free from his day-to-day financial worries,even though there is essentially zero chance of actually succeeding. In the case of pigging out, one is enjoying the feeling of being stuffed with tasty food, even though there is essentially zero chance that there will be a food shortage next week which will justify his having pigged out.
Bad analogy. Eating pizza (or any other high-energy food that you happen to like) is intrinsically rewarding. You don't do it all the time because you trade off this reward with other rewards (e.g. not being fat and hence ugly and unhealthy). Buying a lottery ticket is not intrinsically rewarding if you don't win, which happens with a negligible probability.
Well, buying a lottery ticket may be intrinsically rewarding if you suffer from gambling addiction, which means that you've screwed your reward system and by gambling you are doing a sort of wireheading. That's pretty much like doing drugs.
At the level of conscious preferences, you don't want to do that.
For what value of ‘intrinsically’? It sure isn't rewarding for a paperclip maximizer, and IIUC you seem to be implying that doing drugs isn't intrinsically rewarding for non-addicted people.
I think for the value of "biologically hardwired into humans".
(I was going to say ‘then so is alcohol’ (specifically, the feeling of being tipsy), then I remembered of this claim and realized I was probably about to commit the typical mind fallacy.)
I'm not quite sure about this; there are certainly humans who find pizza inedible for cultural reasons. I suppose you could argue that the composition of pizza is such that it would appeal to a hypothetical "unbiased" human, but that might still be problematic.
I think the argument is really for "any ... high-energy food that you happen to like", not for culture-specific things like pizza.
Do I have to specify that I was talking about humans?
Non-addicted people generally understand that addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine can give them short-term rewards but potentially hamper the satisfaction of their long-term preferences, hence they assign a negative expected utility to them.
On the other hand, eating pizza in moderate amounts is consistent with the satisfaction of long-term preferences.