Emily Falk

It chooses the one that it thinks is going to be the best for me right here, right now.

And then it is connected to other brain systems that take action that's relevant to that choice.

Exactly.

So when I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to eat the delicious dessert that's sitting in front of me, the short-term reward of how delicious it's going to taste is more salient.

That weighs more heavily in that value calculation than the long-term consequence if I do that over and over again over the course of years or even how I'm going to feel tomorrow or later this evening.

Right.

Not only is it far-off, but it's less vivid, right?

I can totally imagine how much fun it's going to be to play with that toy right here that's in front of me, whereas who knows what kind of toys are going to be available during my retirement.

Well, you're probably familiar with the party game, would you rather, where I might ask you different kinds of things that are usually not as simple as the option that you brought up.

Like, would you rather eat an apple or an orange?

Or would you rather eat a blueberry tart or a lemon cheesecake?

Though, of course, the value system can handle those kinds of would you rather choices.

But I also think it's pretty incredible that it can handle the more abstract kind of choices that we usually give it at a party that are not inherently comparable.

Like, would you rather have a cat's tongue or would you rather have roller skates for hands?

Right.

Like those are totally different things.

And it's not like you can directly compare what the advantages and disadvantages would be.

But you might have some intuition about which one you would choose.

Exactly.

Likewise, we can do this with money.