hyporational comments on Why I haven't signed up for cryonics - Less Wrong

29 Post author: Swimmer963 12 January 2014 05:16AM

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Comment author: hyporational 12 January 2014 04:27:22PM 0 points [-]

when I'm considering some decision that I'm conflicted over, it very literally feels like there's an actual struggle between different parts of my brain

Ok. To me it most often feels like I'm observing that some parts of my brain struggle and that I'm there to tip the scales, so to speak. This doesn't necessarily lead to a desirable outcome if my influence isn't strong enough. I can't say I feel conflicted about in what direction to tip the scales, but I assume this is just because I'm identifying with a part of my brain that can't monitor its inner conflicts. I might have identified with several conflicting parts of my brain at once in the past, but don't remember what it felt like, nor would I be able to tell you how this transformation might have happened.

Rather it feels like one part managed to get the upper hand and could temporarily force the other part into accepting the decision that was made, but the conflict isn't really resolved in any sense

This sounds like tipping the scales. Are you indentifying with several conflicting processes or are you just expressing yourself in a socially convenient manner? If you're X that's trying to make process A win process B in your brain and process B wins in a way that leads to undesirable action, does it make any sense to say that you did something you didn't want to do?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 12 January 2014 07:21:38PM *  1 point [-]

Your description of tipping the scale sounds about right, but I think that it only covers two of the three kinds of scenarios that I experience:

  1. I can easily or semi-easily tip the scale in some direction, possibly with an expenditure of willpower. I would mostly not classify this as a struggle: instead I just make a decision.
  2. I would like to tip the scale in some direction, but fail (and instead end up procrastinating or whatever), or succeed but only by a thin margin. I would classify this as a struggle.
  3. I could tip the scale if I just decided what direction I wanted to tip them in, but I'm genuinely unsure of what direction I should tip them in. If scenario #1 feels like an expenditure of willpower in order to override a short-term impulse in favor of a long-term goal, and #2 like a failed or barely successful attempt to do so, then #3 feels like trying to decide what the long-term goal should be. Putting it differently, #3 feels like a situation where the set of processes that do the tipping do not necessarily have any preferences of their own, but rather act as the "carriers" of a set of preferences that multiple competing lower-level systems are trying to install in them. (Actually, that description doesn't feel quite right, but it's the best I can manage right now.)

I now realize that I hadn't previously clearly made the distinction between those different scenarios, and may have been conflating them to some extent. I'll have to rethink what I've said here in light of that.

I think that I identify with each brain-faction that has managed to "install" "its" preferences in the scale-tipping system at some point. So if there is any short-term impulse that all the factions think should be overriden given the chance, then I don't identify with that short-term impulse, but since e.g. both the negative utilitarian and deontological factions manage to take control at times, I identify with both to some extent.

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