pjeby comments on Pain and gain motivation - Less Wrong

45 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 07 April 2010 06:48PM

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Comment author: pjeby 08 April 2010 01:56:03AM 2 points [-]

Fortunately your list was described as 'rough' so it seems about right.

One reason for that is that, for the uses I have for that list, it doesn't require you to be able to objectively categorize your response or concern. It's more like how we teach people the basic color names, and then people can argue about whether a particular color is teal or aqua. ;-)

All the list does is provide a convenient, memorable framework for thinking and talking about the terminal values human brains use to organize learning and behavior... and a way of pointing people to the aspects of their own experience that will show them how they're programmed and what they need to do to reprogram themselves.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, if somebody wants to add "magenta" or "puce" to the list of colors, it doesn't harm the idea of a spectrum, just as different musical scales can cover the same range of frequencies. The advantage of SASS as a particular "scale" or "color scheme" is that it's simple and memorable: it's easier to answer "which of these four things do I feel I'm missing/needing in this situation" than "why am I doing this?"

(In particular, the second question calls for a far-brain answer, and a big part of the social far brain's function is to obfuscate your SASS-seeking motives from other people, by making up socially-acceptable reasons why you do things.)