There seems to be a difference here—how much money you earn isn’t perceived as entirely a matter of choice, or at any rate there will be a significant and unavoidable lead time between deciding to earn more and actually earning more.
Whereas body shape is within our immediate sphere of control: if we eat less and work out more, we’ll weigh less and bulk up muscle mass, with results expected within days to weeks.
When I say “I can move my arm if I want”, this is readily demonstrated by moving my arm. Is this the same sense of “want” that people have in mind when they say “I want to eat less” or “I want to quit smoking”?
The distinction that seems to appear here is between volition—making use of the connection between our brains and our various actuators—and preference—the model we use to evaluate whether an imagined state of the world is more desirable than another. We conflate both in the term “want”.
We are often quite confused as to what volitions will bring about states of the world that agree with our preferences. (How many times have you heard “That’s not what I wanted to say/write”?)
I categorically reject your disanalogy from both directions.
I have been eating about half as much as usual for the past week or so, because I’m on antibiotics that screw with my appetite. I look the same. Once, I did physically intense jujitsu twice a week for months on end, at least quadrupling the amount of physical activity I got in each week. I looked the same. If “eating less and working out more” put my shape under my “immediate sphere of control” with results “within days to weeks”, this would not be the result. You are wrong. Your statements may apply to people with certain metabolic privileges, but not beyond.
By contrast, if I suddenly decide that I want more money, I have a number of avenues by which I could arrange that, at least on a small scale. It would be mistaken of me to conclude from this abundance of available financial opportunity that everyone chooses to have the amount of money they have, and that people with less money are choosing to take fewer of the equally abundant opportunities they share with the rich.
OK, allowing that the examples may have been poorly chosen—the main point I’m making is that people often a) say they want something, b) act in ways that do not bring about what they say they want.
Your response above seems to be that when people say “I want to be thin”, they are speaking strictly in terms of preference: they are expressing that they would prefer their world to be just as it is now, with the one amendment that they are a certain body type rather than their current. Similarly when saying they want money.
There are other cases where volition and preferences appear at odds more clearly. People say “I want to quit smoking”, but they don’t, when it’s their own voluntary actions which bring about an undesired state. The distinction seems useful, even if we may disagree on the specifics of how hard it is to align volition and preference in particular cases.
I’m not the first to observe that “What do you want” is a deeper question than it looks like, and that’s what I meant to say in the original comment.
When you examine it closely “do people actually want to smoke” isn’t a much simpler question than “should there be a law against people smoking” or “is it right or wrong to smoke”. It is possible that these questions are in fact entangled in such a way that to fully answer one is also to answer the others.
I think people sometimes use wanting language strictly in terms of preferences. I think people sometimes have outright contradictory wants. I think people are subject to compulsive or semi-compulsive behaviors that make calling “revealed preference!” on their actions a risky business. The post you linked to (I can’t quite tell by your phrasing if you are aware that I wrote it) is about setting priorities between various desiderata, not about declaring some of those desiderata unreal because they take a backseat.
By contrast, if I suddenly decide that I want more money, I have a number of avenues by which I could arrange that, at least on a small scale. It would be mistaken of me to conclude from this abundance of available financial opportunity that everyone chooses to have the amount of money they have, and that people with less money are choosing to take fewer of the equally abundant opportunities they share with the rich.
This all seems true with the exception of ‘by contrast’. You seem to have clearly illustrated a similarity between weight loss and financial gain. There are things that are under people’s control but which things are under a given person’s control vary by the individual and the circumstances. In both cases people drastically overestimate the extent to which the outcome is a matter of ‘choice’.
The real distinction is between what you want to do now and what you want your future self to do later, though there’s some word confusion obscuring that point. English is pretty bad at dealing with these types of distinctions, which is probably why this is a recurring discussion item.
I think “I want to be thin” has an implied “ceteris paribus”. Ceteris ain’t paribus.
You could as well say, “How many people say they want to have money, yet spend it on housing, feeding, and clothing themselves and avoid stealing?”
I want to have money, I don’t spend it on clothing, and I do avoid stealing.
Edit: This information may or may not be relevant to anyone’s point.
There seems to be a difference here—how much money you earn isn’t perceived as entirely a matter of choice, or at any rate there will be a significant and unavoidable lead time between deciding to earn more and actually earning more.
Whereas body shape is within our immediate sphere of control: if we eat less and work out more, we’ll weigh less and bulk up muscle mass, with results expected within days to weeks.
When I say “I can move my arm if I want”, this is readily demonstrated by moving my arm. Is this the same sense of “want” that people have in mind when they say “I want to eat less” or “I want to quit smoking”?
The distinction that seems to appear here is between volition—making use of the connection between our brains and our various actuators—and preference—the model we use to evaluate whether an imagined state of the world is more desirable than another. We conflate both in the term “want”.
We are often quite confused as to what volitions will bring about states of the world that agree with our preferences. (How many times have you heard “That’s not what I wanted to say/write”?)
I categorically reject your disanalogy from both directions.
I have been eating about half as much as usual for the past week or so, because I’m on antibiotics that screw with my appetite. I look the same. Once, I did physically intense jujitsu twice a week for months on end, at least quadrupling the amount of physical activity I got in each week. I looked the same. If “eating less and working out more” put my shape under my “immediate sphere of control” with results “within days to weeks”, this would not be the result. You are wrong. Your statements may apply to people with certain metabolic privileges, but not beyond.
By contrast, if I suddenly decide that I want more money, I have a number of avenues by which I could arrange that, at least on a small scale. It would be mistaken of me to conclude from this abundance of available financial opportunity that everyone chooses to have the amount of money they have, and that people with less money are choosing to take fewer of the equally abundant opportunities they share with the rich.
OK, allowing that the examples may have been poorly chosen—the main point I’m making is that people often a) say they want something, b) act in ways that do not bring about what they say they want.
Your response above seems to be that when people say “I want to be thin”, they are speaking strictly in terms of preference: they are expressing that they would prefer their world to be just as it is now, with the one amendment that they are a certain body type rather than their current. Similarly when saying they want money.
There are other cases where volition and preferences appear at odds more clearly. People say “I want to quit smoking”, but they don’t, when it’s their own voluntary actions which bring about an undesired state. The distinction seems useful, even if we may disagree on the specifics of how hard it is to align volition and preference in particular cases.
I’m not the first to observe that “What do you want” is a deeper question than it looks like, and that’s what I meant to say in the original comment.
When you examine it closely “do people actually want to smoke” isn’t a much simpler question than “should there be a law against people smoking” or “is it right or wrong to smoke”. It is possible that these questions are in fact entangled in such a way that to fully answer one is also to answer the others.
I think people sometimes use wanting language strictly in terms of preferences. I think people sometimes have outright contradictory wants. I think people are subject to compulsive or semi-compulsive behaviors that make calling “revealed preference!” on their actions a risky business. The post you linked to (I can’t quite tell by your phrasing if you are aware that I wrote it) is about setting priorities between various desiderata, not about declaring some of those desiderata unreal because they take a backseat.
Yup.
Not sure if you mean to imply I’ve been saying that. That wasn’t my intention.
This all seems true with the exception of ‘by contrast’. You seem to have clearly illustrated a similarity between weight loss and financial gain. There are things that are under people’s control but which things are under a given person’s control vary by the individual and the circumstances. In both cases people drastically overestimate the extent to which the outcome is a matter of ‘choice’.
The “by contrast” paragraph is meant to illustrate how and why I reject the disanalogy “from both directions”.
The real distinction is between what you want to do now and what you want your future self to do later, though there’s some word confusion obscuring that point. English is pretty bad at dealing with these types of distinctions, which is probably why this is a recurring discussion item.