I wrote a little on April 29 about “The Power of Habit”, by Charles Duhigg. Well, I finished it yesterday, and I have a few more thoughts on it.
I’d stopped just past the halfway point before, when it was getting bogged down in business and marketing. It stayed stuck on that path for most of the remainder… talking about Target's marketing schemes and church evangelism and so forth. But once it got to the last chapter it turned back to psychology and then took a detour into philosophy.
The final chapter of the book is called “The Neurology of Free Will”. The two subjects it delves into are addiction and sleepwalking.
The case study for addiction is Angie Bachman, a gambling addict. She lost her life savings, went bankrupt, inherited, and then lost her inheritance. When her creditors took her to court she argued that she shouldn’t be held responsible for the debt, because she was addicted to gambling and so wasn’t in control of her actions. Her expert witnesses showed that the neural wiring for gambling addiction was very similar to that of drug addiction. She lost the case… and her house. The reasons for the verdict seemed to be that, whatever compulsion she had to continue gambling, she had made the free choice to start gambling in the first place.
The case study for sleepwalking was Brian Thomas, who dreamed that he had fought off an intruder and woke to find he had killed his wife. Unlike Angie, he won his case. The jury was persuaded that, although parts of his brain were controlling the movement of his hands, his decision-making brain was asleep.
I suppose they were operating purely on a punitive justice model. Sure, he didn’t deserve to be punished. I can buy that. But if you have a rehabilitative justice model, this view doesn’t make as much sense. If the priority is to make sure it doesn’t happen again, then whether he deserves punishment or not is less important.
It’s tough to figure out the best way to deal with homicidal sleepwalking, where you can’t control your actions and are a danger to those around you. But this is where a thorough background in theoretical morality (IE fiction) comes in handy. It turns out there are good analogies for this sleepwalking. The Hulk comes to mind… he gets a little mad, turns green, and goes berserk. It might be mean to just launch him into space, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t the best decision.
Or to get even closer, what about werewolves? If you know you’re going to lose control on the night of the full moon, and might hurt someone, then there’s a way to deal with that. You find a safe place to stay the night, and get someone to let you out when you wake up. If you don’t take those precautions… well, then someone has to stop you before there gets to be too many werewolves.
I suppose another way of looking at it would be to bring it back to addiction. Drunk drivers haven’t always been considered responsible for their actions. But that started to change when people realized that they were choosing to get drunk in the first place… however impaired their judgement was at 2AM, they still could have handed over their keys before they started. If the bartender gives them their keys back… well, the bartender has a lot of the responsibility.
Perhaps a gambling addict might absolve themselves of responsibility by putting their assets in a trust. And if they’ve taken that step then the trustee would bear the responsibility.
It’s not a very convenient solution, but it might be better than nothing.
Anyway, habits. Right. So to sum up: make good habits, change bad habits, don’t gamble, carry silver bullets. Hulk smash.
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