By now, every smoker and tobacco chewer on earth knows that to continue doing it will lower their expected lifespan. I'm all for getting quality information to

By now, every smoker and tobacco chewer on earth knows that to continue doing it will lower their expected lifespan. I'm all for getting quality information to people so that they can make the best decisions, but I think we've reached a point where this is no longer the main issue. Or, perhaps it's not really an issue in the first place. Imagine a society that optimized for their average life expectancy. It could ban all vices and unhealthy foods and put people in "health prisons" when they don't pass BMI benchmarks. Obviously, not many people would want to live in this country, despite it having the highest life expectancy. My point is that people's internal value function, on average, probably isn't life expectancy or even health outcomes. Those may be important, but people make tradeoffs every day. That doesn't mean they're not doing things that maximize their real value function, even if they have access to the best information.