RichardKennaway comments on Control Theory Commentary - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Vaniver 22 January 2015 05:31AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 27 January 2015 05:50:05PM 3 points [-]

humans are primarily satisficers, and make pretty crappy maximizers

Is there some reason they should be maximisers?

And then we wouldn't e.g. get hooked on fast food.

"What do you mean by 'we', paleface?" :)

How do you explain why some people do not get hooked on fast food? To me, what McDonalds and similar places serve does not even count as food. It is simply not my inclination to eat such things. I don't play computer games much either, to name another "superstimulus". I do not click on any link entitled "10 things you must..." This isn't the wisdom of age; the same is true of my younger adult selves (mutatis mutandis -- some of those things had not been invented in those days).

Ok, that's just me, but it's an example I'm very familiar with, and it always feels odd to see people going on about superstimuli and losing weight and the ancestral environment and the latest pop sci fads and observe that I am mysteriously absent, despite not being any sort of alien in disguise.