Agree to disagree. Recent work has shown differences in brain function in problem gamblers, including 'near miss' and 'gambler's fallacy' effects as well as differences in dopamine function in impulsive gamblers.
That's the great thing about being a human, though - you don't need to operate on the pleasure principle alone. I live three minutes walk from Regent Thai and if I lived by dopamine reinforcement alone I'd eat there three meals a day. I choose not to because that'd be bad for me.
If you are continually making destructive choices, that's not rational.
I agree with that, and I don't believe I've said anything to indicate otherwise. Gambling is almost always an irrational action, and pokie gambling most definitely so.
That stopping behaviour comment is a reductio ad absurdum. You can make a fortune in psychology by applying your working knowledge of that principle. Irrational but voluntary? Be careful you don't fall through that escape hatch.
How do you argue against the absurdity of Dobie's reductionism of family break up as a form of pokie entertainment then make the statement that all addicts can simply stop their behaviour?
Perhaps you read my "can" more lightly than I intended it. I meant in no way to imply that it is an easy thing to do, and I know from first-hand experience that it isn't. But of course all addicts
can change their behaviour. They
can go cold turkey, they
can moderate, they
can take steps to seek help (plenty choose to replace an addiction to a substance or behaviour with an addiction to attending 12 Step meetings... nearly always a poor choice in my view).
None of this means that most or even many of them
will, I grant you.
Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Jeff Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Peter Sutcliffe, Fred and Rosemary West et al were all inventive in what they did. Are they sane minds?
Sane was a bad word to use because it means different things depending on the context: clinical, moral, legal. But in this instance we were talking about personal culpability. Do I hold the people on your list culpable for their actions? Abso-freakin-lutely.