army1987 comments on Three more ways identity can be a curse - Less Wrong

40 Post author: gothgirl420666 28 April 2013 02:53AM

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Tags: psychology identity social akrasia self-help decision skills theory

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Comment author: [deleted] 03 May 2013 10:32:43PM 2 points [-]

However, Alice is very bright, and is the type of person who can adapt herself to many situations and learn skills quickly. If Alice were to spend the first six months of college deeply immersing herself in studying business, she would probably start developing a passion for business. If she purposefully exposed herself to certain pro-business memeplexes (e.g. watched a movie glamorizing the life of Wall Street bankers), then she could speed up this process even further. After a few years of taking business classes, she would probably begin to forget what about English literature was so appealing to her, and be extremely grateful that she made the decision she did. Therefore she would gain the same 2 mu from having a job she is passionate about, along with an additional 1 mu from being rich, meaning that the 3 mu choice of business wins out over the 2 mu choice of English.

Down that path wireheading lies. What if she can self-modify into someone who gets 10 mu from doing heroin daily?

Comment author: gothgirl420666 03 May 2013 11:50:08PM 1 point [-]

I explicitly addressed that in the post.

Comment author: Kindly 03 May 2013 10:48:51PM 1 point [-]

The question to ask is: "Are there considerations other than enjoyment to recommend English literature over business?" (and possibly also: do these considerations outweigh being richer?)

Gandhi would not want to take a pill that made him want to kill people, even if he could then enjoy life more by killing people. This is because not killing people matters to Gandhi for more reasons than just because it matters to him.

However, if it is in fact easy to self-modify to enjoy something, that's a good reason not to make serious decisions on the basis of what you'd enjoy doing most.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 03 May 2013 11:08:14PM 0 points [-]

It seems like there ought to be a difference between my reasons not to self-modify into someone who enjoys something I don't object to but don't particularly enjoy, and my reasons not to self-modify into someone who enjoys something I object to. (Of course, I'm not obligated to object to heroin use, either, but if I don't my response to your hypothetical is "Yeah, so what's the problem?", which I assume isn't the response you were looking to evoke.)

Comment author: [deleted] 04 May 2013 08:07:34AM 0 points [-]

Good point. That reminded me of a LW post I once saw about a three-dimensional classification of desires according to “wanting”, “enjoying” and “endorsing”, which I can't find at the moment.

Comment author: Kindly 04 May 2013 02:54:23PM 3 points [-]

Here you go.

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