Probably the most relevant post:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/01/we_cant_foresee.html

Another game proposed to shed light on this:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/01/the_coin_guessi.html

I think the relationship to Aumann's theorem is direct and strong. It's the same old question of how Aumann-like reasoning plays out in practice, for only partially rational agents, that was much discussed back in the Overcoming Bias days.

What concerns me is that I think we should be striving for something better, not justifying the status quo.

That's begging the question: what's better and why?

It's not begging that particular question... the implicit assumption is that the current state of affairs is far from optimal, not that my particular definition of optimal is correct. In fact part of the point is to explore what values we might hold (and still hold after reflection on those values) that would value fiction. I feel this is a valuable exercise largely because when I do reflect on it, arguments to the effect that fiction is something I reflectively value are rather difficult to make. If I were to discover that I don't in fact value fiction on reflection, that would be good news: easy life improvement by no longer acting as if I value fiction.

Many good things are best consumed in moderation. [...] The very name binge-watching labels it as an injurious behavior akin to binge drinking.

True. The point I was trying to make is that when I talk to people about this, they tend to give rather high-minded justifications of the value of fiction (usually as a means to other ends, not as an end in itself). While these high-minded justifications may in fact be correct, they seem very different from the motivation which actually causes people to consume fiction. The result of this difference is that the kind of fiction which is readily available on the market is more often "potato chip fiction" as opposed to "baked potato fiction": still food, but awfully greasy.

This point may not be that relevant to the overall set of questions.

That seems like a fully general argument against any solitary activity

I feel like this remark ignores the part before the text you quote ("there's an actual person") which is very much not a fully general argument, but rather an argument against solitary activities which are misleading superstimulus telling system 1 it's achieving things it's not.

There's also a big difference between creative activities (spending solitary time writing a book, say) and consumptive activities. It's certainly possible to spend alone time without the activity being "isolated" in the sense that I mean.

It's also possible for someone to be entirely creative and not engage in fiction at all while still being "isolated" in the sense I mean. When I imagine a version of me or someone else toiling away at something they love with plans to totally burn it without showing anyone before they die, I feel like something is lost in this sense; not interconnected with the web of life.

Perhaps that's just a bad intuition I have about my values, and/or perhaps it's not a thing many other people value. I don't know.

Beyond that, I think the difference I'm pointing to is that fiction feels disproportionately like a good thing (because it's designed to). If there is any distinction to be made between what feels immediately valuable and what I'd find valuable on reflection, fiction will tend to optimize for the first. (This is also true of other types of information I might consume, but fiction has particularly large freedom to optimize these differences.)

I think people (not just me) generally develop a kind of "memetic immune system" defense against the types of superstimulus which are present in abundance in their culture. We have a much higher bar for humor on television than in real life, because funny things happen with much greater frequency on television. No matter how much more attractive the people on television are, we adjust our expectations (somewhat, at least) and are able to find the people we meet in person relatively attractive. And so on. This generally gives us the ability to not waste too much time on the superstimulus. (It also means that they may not have similar defenses against superstimulus available in other places; an example is people over-doing recreational drugs when they visit places where more things are legal. The native population of those places is not prone to the same excess.)

There's a big difference between saying wireheading and superstimulus are bad and saying enjoyment is bad. The way I'm framing it, that's roughly like the difference between saying that counterfeit money is bad and saying money is bad.

Regardless of how well it follows the random walk, it already violates the assumption of rational agents.

Yes, good point.

Yes, my actual position on this is much closer to "fiction is bad if it's not a social activity" rather than "fiction is bad".

This does not work as an argument against the extremist position, however. Continuing the devil's-advocate line of thought, I say: if fiction is just good as a social activity because I have friends who like fiction, isn't that just me being the elephant tied with a chain to a non-optimal social situation?

I am not saying you're wrong -- in fact I think you are right. What concerns me is that I think we should be striving for something better, not justifying the status quo. That's why I think this is a useful exercise. I'm very skeptical that our current behavior here would just happen to be anywhere near the best we can do. In fact I think fiction is very often more like the ice cream. Our motives for binge-watching an entire series or such are more often self-defeating than good, in any plausible interpretation of the word "good".

As for the final question -- what makes fiction feel more like wireheading than a relationship -- my answer is that there's a real person as opposed to the projected image of a non-real person. The difference is somewhat analogous to the difference between visiting your bank's website and seeing a large sum of money in the account, and visiting a fake banking website whose sole purpose is to simulate the experience of seeing a large sum of money in your account. The actual relationship with an actual person is good in that it not only creates a sequence of feelings and impressions in the brains of both people, but furthermore creates a richly interconnected dance between the two people which is lacking in fiction.

Exactly. The mindset that says twisting the truth is a basically bad thing doesn't then conclude that fiction is OK because it's sometimes less twisty than (well-manipulated) fact.

I feel confused, and am likely missing some bad assumption. For the purpose of working through the assumptions, I'll keep arguing the anti-fiction side...

The part of me that feels like doing away with fiction could be a good idea also would be OK with doing away with many of those other things you mentioned. Eating ice cream is bad as a matter of fact (this doesn't seem to require much argument). It's just a superstimulus for "good food", and furthermore, negatively impacts health. Noticing this (consciously noticing it on a repeated basis) can in fact move preferences away from ice cream and toward healthier food, to the point where ice cream doesn't even feel tempting except socially.

(My actual motivational state is not like this, but rather flips back and forth between finding ice cream appealing and not. I have not decided to adjust my emotional state entirely toward the reality, largely because this change in motivational state would have some negative social consequences.)

Trips to beautiful natural sites do seem kind of silly to me. Looking at nice scenery is nice, but on the order of nice things, it seems like something I'm willing to pay significantly less for than what most people are. That's neither here nor there for the debate, though. The part of me that is interested in doing away with fiction says that at least this experience is fact-oriented. There is something valuable about going and seeing real scenery -- historical sites of importance, and things like that -- which is not there when the scenery is entirely simulated. The part of me concerned with wireheading says that this is enough to distinguish between the kind of pleasure produced by visiting real places vs simulating pleasant scenery.

The difference between real and simulated scenery in this respect can easily be blurred. A natural landscape is very different from a landscape specifically optimized by human hands to be pleasant. The part of me concerned with wireheading starts to be concerned about the second. (My actual motivations don't, though -- if things have been arranged in what feels like good taste to me, I enjoy it. Highly optimized landscapes such as malls and theme parks rarely feel like they're in "good taste" however.)

Casual sex isn't desirable to me. The part of me which is concerned with wireheading-like things says that this is because it's not connected to a wider web of meaning. This might be my actual reason. (I prefer a prolonged relationship -- "just sex" sounds like a painful thing emotionally.)

Music is good. The part of me concerned with wireheading says it isn't -- it's just an empty superstimulus.

Overall, I'd say the conclusion of this chain of thought is that to count things as actually-good rather than merely seemingly-good I'd like them to be connected to a wider web of meaning, rather than isolated. "fake" really means "shallow" (surface-level, lacking deeper connections). Taking things out of devil's-advocate mode, this does not seem entirely damning to fiction. It suggests that fiction can in fact be valuable, to the degree that its meaning is interconnected with other things.

It also bears noticing that this argument applies rather heavily to me and my preferences, not necessarily to other people.