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PhilGoetz comments on Uncategories and empty categories - Less Wrong
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So, let me see if I understand this right - you're contending that human behaviour is constrained to behaviour that best benefits the genes? That is to say, that human goals are really sneakily disguised genetic goals?
Then what about people who take a vow of celibacy, who deliberately choose not to have descendants, and therefore subvert any possible genetic goal? How is that possible?
Well, for the particular case of vows of celibacy, let me put it this way:
More generally, humans have values and heuristics that, taken together in the ancestral environment, usually increase genetic fitness. Sometimes they don't, especially when technology and a modern economy provides ability and incentives for people to add superstimuli to the environment. For example, the guy who plays so many video games that he never meets women, or the guy who drinks one Big Gulp(TM) a day until he weighs 300 pounds. Or the guy whose concern for his personal safety, combined with a belief in Heaven and Hell, convinces him to protect his long-term interests with a vow of celibacy.
I don't want to be happy because that increases the likelihood that I'll have lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren. I want lots of happy, well-fed grandchildren because I believe that would increase the likelihood that I'm happy. My desire for grandchildren may change, especially if I think they would be unhappy. My desire for happiness will not change. This is not an error or a case of messed up priorities or me making decisions based on faulty assumptions, it's just how my values are.
These are values you consciously have. But the reason for all your values, if traced back far enough, lies in genetic fitness. Your not being conscious of that doesn't change it.
The cause of my having these values doesn't really make a difference to what my values are. The values I'm conscious of is all that matters to me. I have no moral or emotional commitment whatsoever to reproductive efficiency. That is not one of my values.
Evolution is a super slow optimization process, and the environment changes. I'm equally "genetically fit" (i.e. I was born to survivors) to any thing alive today, but have a very different goal set.
But the reason for all your values, if traced back far enough, lies in atoms. Your not being conscious of that doesn't change it.
Atoms don't influence the evolution of a species or its values in any particular direction. The system we're looking at is bounded at "the bottom" by selection.
It is not clear to me that you're using "happy" in the way that most people use "happy." Specifically, the things that people enjoy and the things that people pursue are often different, and whether or not people are pleased in near mode or far mode are different things. It could very well be that you pursue children but they decrease your enjoyment of life, and yet you pursue them despite knowing that.
I use the formula engagement + meaning + enjoyment to calculate happiness. Children may well be a net negative to enjoyment at times. Whether or not I decide to have them depends on whether I believe that's going to be outweighed by engagement and meaning most of the time.