Alicorn comments on Let There Be Light - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Alicorn 17 March 2010 07:35PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 18 March 2010 08:55:58PM 1 point [-]

I prefer to model people as adaptation executors who respond to subcommunications and signals in a way that was optimized by evolution, and then, if asked, confabulate verbal rationalizations for their behavior.

What predictions does this model let you make? When have you seen it compellingly confirmed in situations where other models would have had you predict something else? It sounds dangerously vulnerable to epicyclic adaptation to individual cases that don't align with it.

Comment author: mattnewport 18 March 2010 09:38:56PM 2 points [-]

The 'fake it until you make it' school of self-improvement is based around this kind of model. For example, if you want to be a self-confident person and derive the benefits of self-confidence, start out 'faking' self-confidence and mimicking the behaviours and signals of self-confident people. Other people will generally respond to this as they would respond to someone who is 'actually' self confident and a virtuous circle will result in you eventually not having to fake the self confidence any more.

A prediction of this kind of model might therefore be that the best way to improve self-confidence is to consciously mimic the behaviours of self confident individuals rather than to try and 'internally' improve your self confidence. Anecdotally I see some evidence that this works but I also see some evidence that evolution has made people better at detecting fakers than a naive version of the model might suppose.

Comment deleted 18 March 2010 11:34:11PM [-]