From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 02 1999 - 07:49:07 MST
Ken Clements responds to Glen Finney:
> > I may get rid of some of the more autonomic ones should they no longer be
> > necessary, such as hunger, thirst, etc., but curiosity, compassion, loyalty
> > are likely to be with me a long, long, long time.
>
>If only the vast majority of the world had your good wants, or at least
>wanted to have those wants, my heart would soar like an eagle.
I'm not so sure. In many ways we fool ourselves into thinking that that our
values are the ones others would approve of, and are not very aware of the
degree to which our values are otherwise, and of how functional those other
values are.
For example, consider "limerence", or the feeling of being in love. In this
state, people think their current love is by far the most important thing in
life, and are confident this feeling will last for a long time. But in fact
they don't actually change that much in their life for their love, and the
feeling passes much more quickly than they expect.
I think this made evolutionary sense; by fooling themselves they can fool
their partner, and thereby convince their partner to stay with them. Or more
accurately, it seems a signaling game; the more you actually plan on staying
the more you are willing to fool yourself into thinking you'll stay even
longer. You may some stupid decisions in this state, but that can be worth
it to gain the partnership. And hopefully inertia and friends will limit
just how much stupidity results.
In the future, all sorts of trouble will come from people who fall in love
and then change themselves to stay in that state of mind, forever writing
love poems, using pet names, and sacrificing all for their partner, even
when that partner did not so change themselves and have passed on to other
relationship stages (including goodbye).
Similarly, great trouble will come from people making themselves actually be
more like the loyal, fearless, upbeat, compassionate, exciting, etc. person
they think they are, and want to become even more. By not realizing how
functional it is to often have the opposite of these characteristics, they
will become substantially less functional.
So I am selfish, but like most people I want to think of myself as
compassionate, and so in that sense I want to want to care. But realizing
the above problem, I don't want to want to care as much.
(So Hal, is that a good example of W3? :-)
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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