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Well there’s a lot of evidence about the role environment plays. The most famous example I know of is the Vietnam opioid study: https://www.statnews.com/2021/0

by awb 5y ago

Well there’s a lot of evidence about the role environment plays. The most famous example I know of is the Vietnam opioid study: https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/19/lessons-learned-and-lost-vietnam-era-addiction-study/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/19/lessons-learned-and-lost... When removing mental illness from the study, many service members who had addiction in Vietnam had no addiction or relapse when they returned to the US, even without any treatment. The leading theories were reduced stress, better social support and less access to opioids. So, if you’re growing up in a city and/or family unit with high stress (high crime, low opportunity), poor social influences / support structures and high access to dangerous or illegal activities, you’re far more likely to fall into addiction or poor decision making through no extra fault of your own. If you grow up with low stress, great influences and little temptation, you’re more likely to make good decisions with no bonus points for you. So yeah, decision making is a huge part of your health, but for this study of service men in the 50s the deck was stacked against them in Vietnam and stacked in their favor in the US. It’s interesting to see the same exact person experiencing two wildly different outcomes with their environment being the largest differing factor, rather than education, treatment, etc. It suggests that it’s hard to educate someone into making better decisions, but easier to help them make better decisions by helping them find a healthier environment. This line up with research about self control fatigue that each decision proves and act of self restraint is fatiguing (https://www.nutritionaction.com/daily/what-not-to-eat/decision-fatigue-can-lead-to-poor-choices-of-what-to-buy-and-eat/ https://www.nutritionaction.com/daily/what-not-to-eat/decisi...). Which is akin to the salesman’s trick of the trade: “persistence wears down resistance”. The more you’re tempted the more likely you are to succumb. So pick your guilty pleasure and now imagine it in your house, on the way to work, enjoyed by your friends and loved ones, everywhere all the time. It’s much harder to resist than if you don’t have access to it or have a healthy mix of people in your life who don’t indulge. I guess I see it more like 70-80% of decisions are influenced by your environment and we’re not as virtuous or evil as our actions alone might seem.

collegeburner 5y ago
In economics we distinguish between naive and sophisticated agents. The naive agent assumes he can continue to maintain self control. However, we want our future selves to make a different set of choices than our future selves often want to make. So, the sophisticated agent recognizes brute self control does not always work and finds ways to commit himself. Most of us are familiar with ways of doing this: - Plan food for the week and don't keep unhealthy things in the house - Get a gym partner to avoid excuses for skipping workouts - Make a budget to place artificial limits on impulse spending If I were a serviceman and knew I was going to places with lots of drugs, and that I had a weakness, I would maybe ask my CO to test me every x days while there. Commit in advance to a course of action that maybe in the future I would not like, but the choice is already made and so I am better off. This is only one possible idea, of course there are others, the point is there are ways to mitigate these problems. There are ways we can work against our future selves to make better choices and doing this is an important part of being an adult. The fact that everybody is not perfect at it does not mean people don't have agency. And an idea of "self control fatigue" does not excuse people from responsibility for the consequences of their actions or failure to succeed.
- awb 5y ago
  > If I were a serviceman and knew I was going to places with lots of drugs, and that I had a weakness, I would maybe ask my CO to test me every x days while there. Try this scenario again but without knowledge of the impact your decision will have and without a benevolent and cooperative support structure and I think it will more accurately describe what many people go through. Your scenario is from an ideal perspective: full information, full awareness and unlimited help from the community. Not everyone has all of those benefits. FYI, I don’t think the servicemen had an addiction to opioids prior to Vietnam. Drugs (and most “poor” decisions) aren’t usually offered up with a fair and balanced perspective, it’s more of a “hey, try this” and you’re already in a hole before you knew it was a hole. Same with healthy eating, financial literacy, etc. If you were raised in a poor, high-crime community by parents who made poor life choices and still found the time to learn about healthy meal prep, workout buddies and proper budgeting, then that’s amazing and kudos to you for overcoming a deck stacked against you.
WalterBright 5y ago
Opiate addiction is still a choice.
- awb 5y ago
  Not all choices are free and simple though. For example, if your family and entire social circle is built around a religion you could say that your religion is still a choice, but if leaving a religion means leaving every important social bond you have, the choice is not as simple and free of consequences as choosing a BBQ sauce at the supermarket. Similarly, if you were never taught stress coping mechanisms, or were conditioned by your parents to seek approval from others, or have been taught to live fast and enjoy your youth, etc. it’s probably a lot easier to decide to try opioids. Even to the point where not trying them feels like going against everything you’ve ever been taught and everything that’s kept you safe and alive up to that point. It’s a nature vs. nurture argument and you’re ignoring the influence nurture has. We could do this all day, but it’s really not hard to think of a scenario where a bad decision to you is the rational decision to someone else. There are more variables at play than try opioids or not. Your entire life up until that point plays a decision and no two lives and value systems are the same.

by awb 5y ago

collegeburner 5y ago

In economics we distinguish between naive and sophisticated agents. The naive agent assumes he can continue to maintain self control. However, we want our future selves to make a different set of choices than our future selves often want to make. So, the sophisticated agent recognizes brute self control does not always work and finds ways to commit himself. Most of us are familiar with ways of doing this: - Plan food for the week and don't keep unhealthy things in the house - Get a gym partner to avoid excuses for skipping workouts - Make a budget to place artificial limits on impulse spending If I were a serviceman and knew I was going to places with lots of drugs, and that I had a weakness, I would maybe ask my CO to test me every x days while there. Commit in advance to a course of action that maybe in the future I would not like, but the choice is already made and so I am better off. This is only one possible idea, of course there are others, the point is there are ways to mitigate these problems. There are ways we can work against our future selves to make better choices and doing this is an important part of being an adult. The fact that everybody is not perfect at it does not mean people don't have agency. And an idea of "self control fatigue" does not excuse people from responsibility for the consequences of their actions or failure to succeed.

awb 5y ago
> If I were a serviceman and knew I was going to places with lots of drugs, and that I had a weakness, I would maybe ask my CO to test me every x days while there. Try this scenario again but without knowledge of the impact your decision will have and without a benevolent and cooperative support structure and I think it will more accurately describe what many people go through. Your scenario is from an ideal perspective: full information, full awareness and unlimited help from the community. Not everyone has all of those benefits. FYI, I don’t think the servicemen had an addiction to opioids prior to Vietnam. Drugs (and most “poor” decisions) aren’t usually offered up with a fair and balanced perspective, it’s more of a “hey, try this” and you’re already in a hole before you knew it was a hole. Same with healthy eating, financial literacy, etc. If you were raised in a poor, high-crime community by parents who made poor life choices and still found the time to learn about healthy meal prep, workout buddies and proper budgeting, then that’s amazing and kudos to you for overcoming a deck stacked against you.

WalterBright 5y ago

Opiate addiction is still a choice.

awb 5y ago
Not all choices are free and simple though. For example, if your family and entire social circle is built around a religion you could say that your religion is still a choice, but if leaving a religion means leaving every important social bond you have, the choice is not as simple and free of consequences as choosing a BBQ sauce at the supermarket. Similarly, if you were never taught stress coping mechanisms, or were conditioned by your parents to seek approval from others, or have been taught to live fast and enjoy your youth, etc. it’s probably a lot easier to decide to try opioids. Even to the point where not trying them feels like going against everything you’ve ever been taught and everything that’s kept you safe and alive up to that point. It’s a nature vs. nurture argument and you’re ignoring the influence nurture has. We could do this all day, but it’s really not hard to think of a scenario where a bad decision to you is the rational decision to someone else. There are more variables at play than try opioids or not. Your entire life up until that point plays a decision and no two lives and value systems are the same.