Vladimir_Nesov comments on Ego syntonic thoughts and values - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Yvain 17 July 2011 08:43PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 14 July 2011 03:35:06PM *  7 points [-]

Socially acceptable ideas present as the conscious mind's own beliefs and desires; unacceptable ones present as compulsions from afar.

I don't believe conscious mind's stated goals can be described as specifically ideas that are socially acceptable, and it doesn't seem like you've made a case for this claim in particular. Arguments from evolutionary psychology are extremely weak, and the data was too scarce to single out this hypothesis. There are all kinds of situations where one would consciously pursue something socially unacceptable.

I think it just so happens that consciously endorsed goals are often socially acceptable, while unconscious drives can go crazy in any number of socially unacceptable ways.

Here, "socially acceptable" plays a role of a broad category that describes many of consciously endorsed goals, and doesn't describe many of the consciously rejected ones. It's easy to find a number of data points that highlight this classification capability, but doing so is not sufficient to suppose close similarity of the categories. There are other familiar categories that fit this requirement, like "non-homicidal", but none of them fit exactly.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 17 July 2011 10:36:38PM 0 points [-]

"non-homicidal"

"virtuous", "not anti-virtuous", "elegant", "not contemptible", "normal"...

"To signal that you are willing to signal. To signal that you are willing to signal as though you think about yourself using their system of categories, and to signal that you are willing to signal as though you are afraid of looking bad by their system of categories, and to signal that you are willing to signal as though you are afraid of being categorized as bad by their system of categories for not being willing to signal as though you think about yourself using their system of categories. It's complicated. It's about predictability, subordination, predictable subordination, and subordination to predictability."