Will_Newsome comments on The curse of identity - Less Wrong

121 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 17 November 2011 07:28PM

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Comment author: Incorrect 17 November 2011 11:41:15PM 3 points [-]

This is probably a very dangerous idea but I think it's worth mentioning if only for the purpose of discussion:

What if you completely sabotage your signalling ability by making yourself appear highly undesirable. Then your actions will not be for the purpose of signalling as it would be futile.

Comment author: AnnaSalamon 17 November 2011 11:56:10PM *  29 points [-]

I've seen this tried, for this stated purpose. My impression of the results was that it did not at all lead to careful, on-the-margins consequentialist thinking and doing. Instead, it led to a stressed out, strung out person trying desperately to avoid more pain/shame, while also feeling resentful at the world and themselves, expecting a lack of success from these attempts, and so acting more from local self-image gradients, or drama-seeking gradients, than from any motives attached to actual hope of accomplishing something non-immediate.

"Signaling motives" can be stuck on a scale, from "local, short-sighted, wire-heading-like attempts to preserve self-image, or to avoid immediate aversiveness or seek immediate reward" to "long-term strategic optimization to achieve recognition and power". It would be better to have Napoleon as an ally than to have a narcotics addict with a 10 minute time horizon as an ally, and it seems analogously better to help your own status-seeking parts mature into entities that are more like Napoleon and less like the drug addict, i.e. into entities that have strategy, hope, long-term plans, and an accurate model of the fact that e.g. rationalizations don't change the outside world.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 07 August 2012 02:05:49AM *  2 points [-]

Heyo, after your correction I still think the main thrust of my reply isn't changed. Your correction mostly just makes me wrong to think that you argued that people that disendorse their status-seeking parts don't have long-term plans, rather than that their long-term planning rationality is worsened. I think I still disagree that their planning is worsened though, but my disagreement is sort of subtle and maybe not worth explaining given opportunity costs. I also stand by my main and mostly-orthogonal points about the importance of not dealing with demons (alternatively, "not making concessions to evil" or summat);—another person you could talk to about that theme would be Nick Tarleton, whose opinion is I think somewhere between ours but is (surprisingly) closer to mine than yours, at least recently. He's probably better at talking about these things than I am.

Thanks for the brief convo by the way. :)