Behavioral proxies compete by the time courses of their rewards, including endogenous rewards.

Natural selection is slow, so behavioral goals must be based on patterns of reward. Addictions are rewarded in the same way as adaptive choice, so they can be distinguished only by their time course. In addition, the reward process is more plastic than is generally recognized, so abstract goals are shaped by the "legibility" of their proxies.

"Switching" between fast and slow processes is just reward-based branching.

Shortcuts to goals are rewarded by faster attainment and punished by more frequent failure, so selection of the various kinds - heuristics, cached sequences (habits or ), gut instincts - depends on reward history just like other kinds of choice. The speeds of shortcuts lie on continua along with speeds of deliberation, and these continua have no obvious separation points.

Framing is a motivated process.

Frames group choices into categories, thus modifying the incentives for them. This effect makes framing itself a motivated choice rather than a neutral cognition. In particular, framing an inferior choice with a high short-term payoff as part of a broad category of choices recruits incentive to reject it; but this must be motivated by its being a test case.

Behavioral construction of the future.

Objective: To examine Howard Rachlin's hypothetical model of molar choice as a tactic for resisting addictions and to explore how some of its then-radical components can be developed to account for nonphysical and far future rewards.

Method: The history of Rachlin's long dialog with the present author about molar choice is reviewed. The possible implications are described of both authors' proposal that behavior can depend entirely on reward.

Reply to commentaries to willpower with and without effort.

Twenty-six commentators from several disciplines have written on the assumption that choice is determined by comparative valuation in a common denominator of reward, the "competitive marketplace." There was no apparent disagreement that prospective rewards are discounted hyperbolically, although some found that the resulting predictions could come just as well from other models, including the interpretation of delay as risk and analysis in terms of hot versus cold valuation systems. Several novel ideas emerged.