If I were Kahneman and I had posed that riddle, I would object that the entire point of the thought experiment is to consider the activity as being of no future utility whatsoever. Just observing the way people behave every day, most of us choose to indulge in pleasures that have no future utility (and in some cases have negative future utility) all the time. We eat junk food, watch TV, waste time watching cat videos. Things that would not obviously be missed if they could not be got.

I think it might be better to remove the other effects. If you could pick between having fun and remembering having fun, all else being equal, which would you choose?

Another way to think about it: suppose your timeline is forked, and in one fork you go on vacation. That timeline is subsequently terminated, after "the experience" happens. Leaving aside the moral issues of terminating a timeline (say, you have no choice in the matter, laws of physics force it, etc.), would you want the fork to happen? This should be easier to deal with, as it has zero consequences for the other timeline.

I think your confusion comes from an underspecification of the initial problem. Are only your memories reset, leaving more subtle personality or physical changes in place (Where did this tan come from?!? Why am I so relaxed?), or are your brain and body (and the rest of the world) entirely reset to the way it was before you went on the vacation? Really, the problem doesn't specify what it means by "not remember the trip" well enough.

Part of what prevents me from understanding the riddle is that I believe vacations are worth more than the memories and photos: vacations change you.

Not if everything is reset back to the way it was!

I think the problem is meant to imply that there would be no way of ever telling you were on the trip; if you took a vacation and then afterwards your body and mind were reset to the way they were before the trip, as were everyone else's, and all evidence of the trip was destroyed, would you take it? Your list of vacation features are all things that, to me, are implicitly implied to be reverted back to previous settings after the vacation.

When I read these I flip between understanding and confused like I'm staring at a Hollow-Mask Illusion.

I have a problem. I refuse to sleep.

I don't mean I can't sleep. I've done experiments where I go to bed with some audio playing that I know, from say a movie, and the next morning I do not remember anything past 5-10 minutes into it. I mean that I just don't sleep. If I have nothing going on in the morning I will stay up until the wee hours of the morning shortly before sunrise regardless of how much sleep I have gotten lately or when I woke up. The only thing that drives me to go to bed is the knowledge that I simply cannot function and feel horrible on less than three hours of sleep. I can also tell after the fact that I am quite foggy on less than 7 hours, but at the time it doesn't feel terribly odd.

I've been tracking my sleep with a tablet under my pillow for over a year now and I average between just under and just over 5 hours a night, depending on the particular month, but the standard deviation is at least two hours and it varies from 2 to 9 hours a night chaotically with no apparent pattern. Worse, in the last six months I think my age (25) is catching up to me - my productivity on low-sleep days has dropped precipitously, and nights that I used to go with 3 or 4 hours of sleep I have a tendency to oversleep through six alarms and wind up with just under 8. I think my body simply can't get by on as little sleep as I used to give it. This leads to me getting into work late (as a grad student done with class-style instruction and just doing my research and talking with faculty my schedule is quite flexible as long as I put in my time) and staying quite late, phase shifting my schedule and screwing up social aspects of my life and encouraging me to go to bed far too late and repeat the cycle.

Again the problem is not with sleeping itself, the problem is with letting myself stop doing things and actually go to bed. There is always something else I want to be doing, be it more research in the lab or reading or internetisms or talking to people 3 time zones west in California. I used to get by but now it is affecting my work and social life.

Any ideas on how to help fix this? I tried going to my university's counseling services but all they did was make sure I wasn't psychotic and suggest ritalin at which point I cancelled the followup appointment.

After initial success but then several bouts of plantar fascitis, new mystery leg pain and a heaping helping of denial I've finally given on up the minimal shoes thing.

I agree walking around in super comfortable shoes all the time probably makes us puny and weak, but I doubt paleolithic man walked and ran on hard city-grade pavement 50+ miles a week.

For political reasons the NHS couldn't write things like

In general, you should not assume that medical staff are competent. Triple check dangerous prescriptions. If you don’t know whether a prescription is dangerous, assume it is. Ask medical staff if they’ve washed their hands (yes, this is actually still a major problem). Sharpie on yourself which side of your body a surgery is supposed to happen on, along with your name and what the surgery is for (seriously).

I am having a hard time finding places I disagree significantly with them. Are you referring to sodium? Here is their article on the salt controversy: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/the-new-salt-controversy/

"pointing out that the committee’s conclusions discounted effects of sodium reduction on blood pressure."

“Discounting the especially large blood pressure reduction going from 2,300 to 1,500 mg in prehypertensives, hypertensives, older adults and blacks who are especially vulnerable to the effects of high sodium betrays an unbalanced weighing of the evidence.”

-Dr. Frank Sacks

There are a couple problems with this critique.

1. It does not seem to me after reading the IoM report that they are discounting BP effects. They are explicitly noting that the BP reducing effects are not resulting in the expected mortality reduction if salt had no positive health effects. BP is a proxy measure for CVD and mortality risk. We shouldn't stick religiously to the proxy if we can gain access to the actual underlying thing we care about.

2. the "especially large reduction" comment seems inappropriate given that the IoM was NOT asked to establish sodium guidelines for people who display an especially high sodium sensitivity or have medical conditions but for the general populace. It also seems to be disregarding the fact that extreme sodium reduction has resulted in higher hospitalizations even in these "at risk" groups. I agree there is ambiguity about where in the 2g-4g consumption level is ideal. I also agree that the recommendation for certain sub-populations might be different. But the evidence of <2g=harm seems pretty solid. This evidence is not exclusively from mortality statistics as Dr. Sacks implies but also from hospitalizations as mentioned.

I have not been able to figure out why the low sodium is being pushed so aggressively. Much of the language used (in that article for instance) leads me to believe that perhaps the belief is that they need to set a very low target in order to effect any change at all. i.e. if we tell them 1500mg maybe they will only overshoot to 2000mg, because they are currently eating 4-5g a day which is definitely harmful. Heavily pushing the salt=bad narrative with no nuance seems dangerous though because there are also people going in the other direction: eating under a gram a day and passing out or having other serious complications. One of the most common hospitalizations being getting lightheaded and falling.

Anyway, was there some other contradiction between my recommendations and the HSPH rec's that you were concerned about?