Update May 2025: I think there’s a more general rule that, if a person wants to do X, then either X has a past and ongoing history of immediately (within a second or so) preceding primary reward, or the person is doing X as a means-to-an-end of getting to Y, where Y is explicitly and consciously represented in their own mind as they do X (for example, think of someone going upstairs to get a sweater). I say this based on how I think reinforcement learning and credit assignment work in the brain. If you buy it, then it would follow that feeling liked / admired has to lead to immediate primary reward, since people are not explicitly thinking about the long-term benefits of social status.
What counts as “primary reward” here? If it means innate drive typ reward triggered by the brainstem and not defer-to-predictor, then this claim seems wrong.
Yeah, “primary reward” (as I’m using the term here) can definitely involve defer-to-predictor on one or more thought assessors (e.g. disgust, physiological arousal … any of them besides valence).
What counts as “primary reward” here? If it means innate drive typ reward triggered by the brainstem and not defer-to-predictor, then this claim seems wrong.
Yeah, “primary reward” (as I’m using the term here) can definitely involve defer-to-predictor on one or more thought assessors (e.g. disgust, physiological arousal … any of them besides valence).