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muflax comments on The curse of identity - Less Wrong
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I don't understand why you call this a problem. If I understand you correctly, you are proposing that people constantly and strongly optimize to obtain signalling advantages. They do so without becoming directly aware of it, which further increases their efficiency. So we have a situation where people want something and choose an efficient way to get it. Isn't that good?
More directly, I'm confused how you can look at an organism, see that it uses its optimization power in a goal-oriented and efficient way (status gains in this case) and call that problematic, merely because some of these organisms disagree that this is their actual goal. What would you want them to do - be honest and thus handicap their status seeking?
Say you play many games of Diplomacy against an AI, and the AI often promised you to be loyal, but backstabbed you many times to its advantage. You look at the AI's source code and find out that it has backstabbing as a major goal, but the part that talks to people isn't aware of that so that it can lie better. Would you say that the AI is faulty? That it is wrong and should make the talking module aware of its goals, even though this causes it to make more mistakes and thus lose more? If not, why do you think humans are broken?
Does your expression of confusion here allow you to challenge the OP's implicit premise that their failure to optimize for the goals they explicitly endorse rather than optimize for signalling is a problem, without overtly signalling such a challenge and thereby potentially subjecting yourself to reprisal?
If so, are you aware of the fact?
If you aren't, is it real confusion or not?
I'm not sure that question means anything, any more than the question of whether the OP has a real problem does. If you are aware of it and similarly aware of your expression of confusion being disingenuous, then by convention we say you're not really confused; if you aren't, we say you are. We can make similar decisions about whether to say the OP has a real problem or not.
Not sure if I understand you correctly; let me try to rephrase it.
You are saying it is possible I claim confusion because I expect to gain status (contrarian status maybe?), as per Kaj's post, instead of being actually confused? Sure. I considered it, but rejected it because that weakens the explanatory power of status signalling. (I'm not sure if I agree with the signalling assumption, but let's for the sake of the argument.)
A real problem exists if an agent tries to optimize for a goal, but sucks at it. It's own beliefs are not relevant (unless the goal is about its beliefs). If Kaj is correct, then humans are optimizing for status, but sacrifice some accuracy of their self-modelling power. It seems to work out, so how is this problematic?
In other words, an agent wants X. It models itself to get better at getting X. The self-model is, among other things, the basis for communication with other agents. The self-model is biased to model itself wrongly as wanting Y. It is advantageous for the agent to be seen as wanting Y, not X. The inaccurate self-model doesn't cause substantial damage to its ability to pursue X, and it is much easier for the self-model to be biased than to lie. This setup sounds like a feature, not like a bug. If you observed it in an organism that wasn't you, wasn't even human, would you say the organism has a problem?
I'm saying it's possible that what's really going on is that you think Kaj is mistaken when he calls the situation a problem... that he has made an error. But rather than say "Kay, you are mistaken, you have made an error" you say "Kaj, I'm confused." And that the reason you do this is because to say "Kay, you are mistaken, you have made an error" is to challenge Kaj's status, which would potentially subject you to reprisals.
It's possible that you're doing this deliberately. In that case, by convention we would say you aren't really confused. (We might also, by convention, say you're being dishonest, or say that you're being polite, or say various other things.)
It's also possible that you are doing this unknowingly... that you are generating the experience of confusion so as to protect yourself from reprisal. In this case, it's less clear whether convention dictates that we say you are "really confused" or "not really confused". I would say it doesn't at all matter; the best thing to do is not ask that question. (Or, if we must, to agree on a convention as to which one it is.)
In any case, I agree with your basic point about goal optimization, I just think talking about whether it constitutes a "real problem" or not contributes nothing to the discussion, much like I think talking about whether you're experiencing "real confusion" in the latter case contributes nothing.
That said, you are completely ignoring the knock-on effects of lying (e.g., increasing the chances that I will be perceived as lying in a social context where being perceived in this way has costs).
Ah, then I misunderstood you. Yes, I believe Kaj is wrong, either in calling this a problem or in the assumption that status-seeking is a good explanation of it. However, based on past contributions, I think that Kaj has thought a lot about this and it is more likely that I'm misunderstanding him than that he is wrong. Thus my expressed confusion. If further discussion fails to clear this up, I will shift to assuming that he is simply wrong.