I almost agree with that formulation better. The problem which I wanted to highlight with the wording—although perhaps the wording I made is not the most effective way to do so—is that there’s something inherently dissimilar about the current situation: you’re making a conscious decision about it. In a world where you’re trying to diet, you still make conscious decisions only a small fraction of the time you eat food.
So your TDT calculation needs to take as input the fact that you currently have the slack/willpower to think about it, and your attention has been drawn to the decision for the particular thing. And this becomes far less generalizable.
I almost agree with that formulation better. The problem which I wanted to highlight with the wording—although perhaps the wording I made is not the most effective way to do so—is that there’s something inherently dissimilar about the current situation: you’re making a conscious decision about it. In a world where you’re trying to diet, you still make conscious decisions only a small fraction of the time you eat food.
So your TDT calculation needs to take as input the fact that you currently have the slack/willpower to think about it, and your attention has been drawn to the decision for the particular thing. And this becomes far less generalizable.