All of Charles Zheng's Comments + Replies

" People don't live merely to survive: we're hardwired to propagate our genes. If you cannot think abstractly and articulate your ideas well, you will have difficulty attracting a mate. People who have disabled their ability to examine themselves will be quickly eliminated from the gene pool. Hence, it seems unlikely that such an illness will occur because it goes against how natural selection has shaped us. " I don't disagree with the gist of the above. However it is tricky to assign clear intentions to a non-human agent, assuming one views biological undercurrents as an analogue to an agent in the first place. Which brings us to: " This reasoning seems to rely on the assumption that the mind was designed by some kind of agent. Who do you think is deciding whether it "makes sense" to allow an expansion of the ability to think? Our best theory is that cognitive expansion resulted as a series of mutations that improved the ability of our ancestors to survive. One does not need to appeal to the fact that "Day Zero illness" does not "make sense" to argue for its implausibility. It is implausible simply by the fact that it is a priori highly unlikely for any novel previously unobserved phenomenon to exist in the absence of a very strong theory that predicts it. " If I assume such an illness can exist, it doesn't mean I can pontificate on the way in which it would be triggered. Certainly some mental illnesses seem to be more common in modern times - despite the ability to account for them and measure number of patients more efficiently. Some slightly related illnesses that do exist are those which have aphasia as a core part. Usually in pre-modern times one finds more elaborate personal accounts by poets and other authors, of such sensations or states; eg in the case of an aphasia-like state, there are two good examples, one from Baudelaire (the french poet) and his sense that he was "touched by the wing of idiocy" etc, and the very dramatic story of the deterioratio

Intuitively, I think it is possible it will appear. Rationally, one may consider the following as well: -not much time has passed since the first use of language (by prehistoric people) to this day, so it can be assumed that only a negligible part of the possible mental calculations/connections has occured -there is no direct survival bonus through ability to think in complicated manner; on the other hand there is arguably an cost-effective logic in disabling great freedom in self-examination However it may take centuries for that to happen. At any rate, it is just my guess - there are so many unknowns about the mind that this may too be impossible to actually happen. One reason why it would be unlikely is that, ultimately, if so grave a danger was built-in a system, it would make more sense to never allow as an option the expansion of ability to think in the first place.

Maximizing proportion of time spent in an enjoyable relationship seems to be the dominant metric for success at dating. It predicts a wide range of behaviors related to dating: * Partners rarely break up unless one of the following factors are met * They don't enjoy their relationship * They believe they can quickly go from their current relationship to another enjoyable relationship (i.e. cheating, breaking up, and then dating their paramour) * When people are single they often attempt to get into an enjoyable relationship * People express that they don't want their partners to break up with them * People complain about being single * People complain about being in a bad relationship * People don't complain about being in an enjoyable relationship It also accounts for what I believe are the dominant subjective valuations we give to other's dating ability. We think that a man who dates many different women is a successful dater, unless we think his relationships are mostly unenjoyable. We consider a woman who has been in a single long-term marriage to be a successful dater, unless we think she hates her husband. Most of the other proposed dating metrics measure our ability to shorten periods of companionlessness or being stuck in a bad relationship. This is done mostly by giving more options.

Interesting-ness of message exchange, enjoyability of dates, satisfaction in long-term relationships. All can be improved if the earlier filters have more candidates. But each stage is itself only satisficing, and doesn't directly improve with quantity (in fact, it may degrade).