[dahart]

Interesting point, you're right that hard-wired can be seen as a metaphor, but I'm curious why you think it's misleading. I was referring to our evolved state, and my belief that our evolved state has mechanisms that fear not having enough food. If there's a problem with what I said, it's not the metaphor, it's what I believe. I can use biology terms instead of electrical terms, but I'd be saying the same thing. We are, in fact, evolved to crave sex and food. I don't think any biologist or anthropologist would disagree with that. Do you think using the term "hard-wired" instead of "evolved" is misleading?

[lr4444lr]

The brain as something that can be "hardwired" is metaphor is a recent manifestation of the brain as a complex but completely deterministic dispatcher. To be clear, I wasn't implying that you said anything wrong about evolutionary drives and their influence on the difficulty of sticking to an eating regimen for weight loss - just that it's only one way of looking at the problem. For example, it is reasonably understood how to create behavioral avoidance using some ethically questionable as was explored in A Clockwork Orange or seen naturally through phobias, both of which undertook the implicit metaphor that the brain has firmware that if flashed hard and often enough can override "hardwiring". Then there are more benign models of child development which work under the general belief that the brain is a kind of tree, which through pruning and delicate bending of the branches over a long but influential period of life can set disposition permanently (this goes back to Aristotle at least).

What I took away from the article is that decisions with serious consequences such as judicial sentencing, managing our health, and massive government policies are made on overly confident assumptions that descriptive metaphorical explanations are definitive statements of reality. This happens because the convenience of language around the terms confuses people.