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PhilGoetz comments on Willpower and diet: advice? - Less Wrong Discussion
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They're not wrong about what they want unless they say that they want to keep their jobs more than they want to take drugs.
"Want" is useful because often people can't do what they want, or haven't yet done what they want; and we need to be able to talk about want as a causative factor for doing.
The drug addict who says she wants to keep her job is just like the voter who says he wants lower taxes. It's true, but irrelevant.
You use "want" this way here, but then seem to deny this very usage to addicts (or to anyone who does not have organizational and motivational capacity to get what they "want").
Okay. A claim of irrelevancy is very different from a claim about truth, and truth is what you seemed to imply in the original comment:
That said, I disagree that it is irrelevant, and you do, too, or else you wouldn't give her tips on how to make her second-order wants into first-order wants.