roshni comments on The curse of identity - LessWrong

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

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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: [deleted] 18 November 2011 03:23:14AM 3 points [-]

Upvoted. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how one could slide that scale more towards the "long-term strategic optimization" end? Assuming that it is possible, of course.