David_Gerard comments on Highlights and Shadows - Less Wrong

15 Post author: Alicorn 28 March 2010 08:56PM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 13 January 2011 06:04:39PM *  -1 points [-]

I have a similar attitude towards akrasia. Yes, parts of me want to get work done, parts of me want to goof off. The usual framing of this is some version of "How can I effectively endorse the former and repudiate the latter?" My own framing of this is some version of "Well, that's interesting."

"I am a not-necessarily-coherent bunch of adaptations, and that's fine."

(The contradictory drives in my own nature, and the contradictory drives I think I see others exercise around me, lead me to suspect that setting us an irresolvable set of conditions is a prank our genes play on us to get us to propagate them. Coherent personal utility function? You're 'avin a larf! I also find this hilarious, which I think is the pain of decompartmentalisation.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 13 January 2011 06:15:10PM 0 points [-]

setting us an irresolvable set of conditions is a prank our genes play on us to get us to propagate them

Under the principle that systems with resolvable drives don't propagate their genes as readily?

Comment author: David_Gerard 14 January 2011 12:32:17PM 2 points [-]

Under the unverified off-the-top-of-my-head hypothesis, yes :-)

If you can think yourself out of the urge to reproduce, that selects against being able to think that well.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 January 2011 01:37:02PM 2 points [-]

Heh.

And yet, natural selection nevertheless seems to allow for folks like me, in whom the urge to reproduce doesn't seem especially salient (well, either that, or my genes are profoundly confused about how that's supposed to work).

So who knows? Perhaps there's a minority out there with internal coherence, as well.

(The bastards.)

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