Ghatanathoah comments on If epistemic and instrumental rationality strongly conflict - Less Wrong

5 [deleted] 10 May 2012 01:46PM

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Comment author: Ghatanathoah 11 May 2012 05:49:45AM *  -1 points [-]

It seems to follow from this line of reasoning that after evolving in a complex environment, I should expect to be constructed in such a way as to care about different things at different times in different contexts, and to consider what I care about at any given moment to be the thing I "really" care about, even if I can remember behaving in ways that are inconsistent with caring about it.

Other possibilities:

  • Evolution could also make you simply care about lots and lots of different things and simply have them change in salience as per your situation. This seems to fit well with the concept of complexity of value.
  • Evolution could give you stable preferences and then give you akrasia so you screw them up if you end up in an environment where they are maladaptive.
  • Some combination of these.
Comment author: TheOtherDave 11 May 2012 12:26:57PM 0 points [-]

Can you clarify how one might tell the difference between caring about different things at different times in different contexts, and caring about lots of different things that change in salience as per my situation? I agree with you that the latter is just as likely, but I also can't imagine a way of telling the two apart, and I'm not entirely convinced that they aren't just two labels for the same thing.

Similar things are true about having akrasia based on context vs. having how much I care about things change based on context.

Comment author: Ghatanathoah 13 May 2012 08:34:22PM -1 points [-]

I think that the fact that people exhibit prudence is evidence for caring about many things that change in salience. For instance, if I'm driving home from work and I think "I need groceries, but I'm really tired and don't want to go to the grocery story," there's a good chance I''ll make myself go anyway. That's because I know that even if my tiredness is far more salient now, I know that having food in my pantry will be salient in the future.

I suppose you could model prudence as caring about different things in different contexts, but you'd need to add that you nearly always care about ensuring a high future preference satisfaction state on top of whatever you're caring about at the moment.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 13 May 2012 10:15:16PM 0 points [-]

I'm not exactly sure I follow you here, but I certainly agree that we can care about more than one thing at a time (e.g., expectation of future food and expectation of future sleep) and weigh those competing preferences against one another.

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