One major example of a situation where you’ll want to hack your terminal goals is if you’re single and want to get into a relationship: you’re far more likely to succeed if you genuinely enjoy the company of members-of-your-preferred-sex even when you don’t think that it will lead to anything.
Agreed. Also helpful is if the parts of you with close access to e.g. your posture and voice tone have an unshakable belief in your dominance within the tribe, and your irresistible sex appeal. In fact social interaction in general is the best example of somewhere that dark side rationality is helpful.
This is the best article on lesswrong in some time. I think it should at least be considered for entry into the sequences. it raises some extremely important challenges to the general ethos around here.
Hmmm. I suspects it depends on the circumstances. If you are a (male) pirate and you want a pirate girlfriend, but the only females in your immediate surroundings are ninjas, you will not find their constant discussions of surikens and stealthy assasinations enjoyable, when you only want to talk about muskets and ship-boardings.
I think that’s exactly the situation the parent was talking about; it’s easier to self-modify to take an interest in shuriken and stealthy assassinations than to convince others to do the converse, or to form a relationship when you have no common interesting conversations.
The difficulty of self-modification depends on the part being modified, the degree of modification, and one’s attitudes towards the change. Some self-modifications are easy, others are impossible.
All right, let’s get back to the real world. We were talking about romantic relations.
It is unlikely that a person who likes classical music and computer science will be able to self-modify into a person who likes heavy metal and stealing cars.
It is unlikely that a person who likes classical music and computer science will be able to self-modify into a person who likes heavy metal and stealing cars.
Can’t speak for stealing cars, but there’s more overlap between classical and metal fans than you might think; there exists a subgenre of neoclassical heavy metal, even.
Also, since cars are now quite integrated with computers this person might have lots of fun stealing them. And if ze watches Breaking Bad there’s a whole lot of inspiration there for intellectuals looking to turn to a life of blue-collar crime.
Maybe I should be steel-manning Locaha’s argument but my point is I don’t think the limits of this sort of self-mod are well understood, so it’s premature to declare which mods are or aren’t “real world”.
I think the problem here is one of motivation to self-modify. For example, it’s one thing to want to self-modify to like spicy food (possible, but potentially unpleasant) or become bisexual (possible for some, probably, but not for others), but other self-modifications are less desirable—for example, I wouldn’t want to be more interested in “normal people” even if it would increase the number of people with whom I’d have relationships.
I’d expect most of the gains from becoming more interested in “normal people” to come from the side effect of improving your emotional rapport with such people, not limited to those you might be interested in dating, not from the direct effect of increasing your supply of potential relationships.
This makes it sound trivial. Would you consider it trivial for someone ship-wrecked on a Ninja Island with a peg-leg and various other piraty injuries?
Then, unfortunately, you must compartmentalise, wear a mask, whatever that makes shurikens endlessly fascinating for you until you (make money to) get your ship fixed. Then set sail, and cast away the mask.
If you don’t enjoy the company of members-of-your-preferred-sex, what do you want a relationship for (that you couldn’t also get from one-night stands or even prostitutes), anyway?
You don’t enjoy company of most members-of-your-preferred-sex, but are hopeful that there are people out there that you could spend your life with. The problem is that finding them is painful, because you have to spend time with people whose company you won’t enjoy during the search.
By hacking yourself to enjoy their company you make the search actually pleasant. Though hopefully your final criteria does not change.
By hacking yourself to enjoy their company you make the search actually pleasant.
“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” ― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
I don’t think that changing your preferences is the same thing as wearing a mask.
If you want to increase your enjoyment of the company of women you might start to do gratitude journaling where you write down everything enjoyable that happens while you are in the company with women.
You could also do another CBT intervention of finding mental distortions. You might find that you are frustrate in the company of woman because they frequently do stuff you don’t consider rational*. Under the terms of the feeling good handbook that reflects that you suffer under the mental distortions of using “should statements”.
You have expectations of how they are supposed to behave. You could switch those expectations against a more realistic expectation. Women are complex systems and studying how the systems work is an interesting activity.
I think most of the people who speak about hacking enjoyment don’t think about what practical steps it entails.
Disclaimer:
*I’m not saying that women are irrational. I’m saying that there are guys who would be more happy if they would let go of a few expectations of how other people should act and switch to become curious in using their intelligence to discover how other people act.
I recall in the whites lies thread a discussion about women lying to men who ask them out. I remember when my friend was lied to by a girl. She said she liked someone else but didn’t, she wanted to let him down easy. He was quite upset about being lied to and I thought he was unequivocally right.
Later I discovered and pondered the perspective of women. Either trained to avoid upsetting men, or fearing possible retaliation to a blatant refusal, plus guess culture. He wouldn’t have done something bad based on her direct refusal, and she wasn’t really from a social place where she had likely encountered violence because of such a refusal, and I know this because I went to school with her all the way from kindergarten. So I attribute it to social conditioning.
Although this is a less persuasive argument than safety, I decided that not having a problem with this action would benefit me in interacting with women, although personally I was never in that situation. What has making this change cost me? Nothing. But it, and many other updates, have allowed me the chance to be less bitter about women should I encounter these circumstances.
As far as your quotes go, yes, deciding to believe this resulted in it becoming a true belief over time. I looked at my terminal goal, and decided to pretend things that made it more likely. Sure those beliefs are now true beliefs of mine, but so what? Has that hurt me somehow?
You could argue the opposite: if you expose yourself indiscriminately to people who don’t share your values, they’ll have a better chance to change them. I think I operate under this assumption. Most people wear some kinds of masks in various situations, and I think some people who insist they shouldn’t just lack basic skills in deception and lie detection. I’m not implying people are more malicious than some people expect, I’m implying deception is generally thought of as a lesser evil than some people think.
If we talk about really hacking your preferences on some deep level, I agree with the danger of unintentionally becoming someone else.
You don’t enjoy company of most members-of-your-preferred-sex, but are hopeful that there are people out there that you could spend your life with. The problem is that finding them is painful, because you have to spend time with people whose company you won’t enjoy during the search.
You seem to be assuming a model where one can only meet a potential mate selected at random from the population, and one’d need to spend a lot of time with her before being allowed to rule her out.
Someone could e.g. enjoy the company, but be so desperate for a relationship with intimacy that any non-intimate interaction with potentially interesting people would be a painful reminder of what they were missing out on. (By “intimacy”, I don’t mean just sex, but also things like trust and a permission to be open with your feelings, hold hands, kiss in a way that mainly denotes affection rather than desire, etc.)
If you don’t enjoy the company of members of your preferred sex when you don’t think it would lead to anything, a relationship is probably not for you, anyway.
One major example of a situation where you’ll want to hack your terminal goals is if you’re single and want to get into a relationship: you’re far more likely to succeed if you genuinely enjoy the company of members-of-your-preferred-sex even when you don’t think that it will lead to anything.
Agreed. Also helpful is if the parts of you with close access to e.g. your posture and voice tone have an unshakable belief in your dominance within the tribe, and your irresistible sex appeal. In fact social interaction in general is the best example of somewhere that dark side rationality is helpful.
This is the best article on lesswrong in some time. I think it should at least be considered for entry into the sequences. it raises some extremely important challenges to the general ethos around here.
Hmmm. I suspects it depends on the circumstances. If you are a (male) pirate and you want a pirate girlfriend, but the only females in your immediate surroundings are ninjas, you will not find their constant discussions of surikens and stealthy assasinations enjoyable, when you only want to talk about muskets and ship-boardings.
I think that’s exactly the situation the parent was talking about; it’s easier to self-modify to take an interest in shuriken and stealthy assassinations than to convince others to do the converse, or to form a relationship when you have no common interesting conversations.
I have to disagree here. It is very hard to self-modify.
The difficulty of self-modification depends on the part being modified, the degree of modification, and one’s attitudes towards the change. Some self-modifications are easy, others are impossible.
All right, let’s get back to the real world. We were talking about romantic relations.
It is unlikely that a person who likes classical music and computer science will be able to self-modify into a person who likes heavy metal and stealing cars.
Can’t speak for stealing cars, but there’s more overlap between classical and metal fans than you might think; there exists a subgenre of neoclassical heavy metal, even.
Also, since cars are now quite integrated with computers this person might have lots of fun stealing them. And if ze watches Breaking Bad there’s a whole lot of inspiration there for intellectuals looking to turn to a life of blue-collar crime.
Maybe I should be steel-manning Locaha’s argument but my point is I don’t think the limits of this sort of self-mod are well understood, so it’s premature to declare which mods are or aren’t “real world”.
I think the problem here is one of motivation to self-modify. For example, it’s one thing to want to self-modify to like spicy food (possible, but potentially unpleasant) or become bisexual (possible for some, probably, but not for others), but other self-modifications are less desirable—for example, I wouldn’t want to be more interested in “normal people” even if it would increase the number of people with whom I’d have relationships.
-
I meant “interest” in the sense of “enjoy interaction with” or “enjoy a relationship with”.
-
I’d expect most of the gains from becoming more interested in “normal people” to come from the side effect of improving your emotional rapport with such people, not limited to those you might be interested in dating, not from the direct effect of increasing your supply of potential relationships.
Then go somewhere else. Duh. :-)
This makes it sound trivial. Would you consider it trivial for someone ship-wrecked on a Ninja Island with a peg-leg and various other piraty injuries?
You can’t. You need money to repair your ship, and only ninjas hire in this economy...
Then, unfortunately, you must compartmentalise, wear a mask, whatever that makes shurikens endlessly fascinating for you until you (make money to) get your ship fixed. Then set sail, and cast away the mask.
You don’t actually have to talk with the ninja girls. There is no requirement to have the same hobbies as your co-workers.
It helped me very much to follow utility “have (and enjoy) a date” instead of “find a relationship”.
If you don’t enjoy the company of members-of-your-preferred-sex, what do you want a relationship for (that you couldn’t also get from one-night stands or even prostitutes), anyway?
(Possibility of having children in the future?)
You don’t enjoy company of most members-of-your-preferred-sex, but are hopeful that there are people out there that you could spend your life with. The problem is that finding them is painful, because you have to spend time with people whose company you won’t enjoy during the search.
By hacking yourself to enjoy their company you make the search actually pleasant. Though hopefully your final criteria does not change.
“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” ― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
I don’t think that changing your preferences is the same thing as wearing a mask.
If you want to increase your enjoyment of the company of women you might start to do gratitude journaling where you write down everything enjoyable that happens while you are in the company with women.
You could also do another CBT intervention of finding mental distortions. You might find that you are frustrate in the company of woman because they frequently do stuff you don’t consider rational*. Under the terms of the feeling good handbook that reflects that you suffer under the mental distortions of using “should statements”.
You have expectations of how they are supposed to behave. You could switch those expectations against a more realistic expectation. Women are complex systems and studying how the systems work is an interesting activity.
I think most of the people who speak about hacking enjoyment don’t think about what practical steps it entails.
Disclaimer: *I’m not saying that women are irrational. I’m saying that there are guys who would be more happy if they would let go of a few expectations of how other people should act and switch to become curious in using their intelligence to discover how other people act.
I recall in the whites lies thread a discussion about women lying to men who ask them out. I remember when my friend was lied to by a girl. She said she liked someone else but didn’t, she wanted to let him down easy. He was quite upset about being lied to and I thought he was unequivocally right.
Later I discovered and pondered the perspective of women. Either trained to avoid upsetting men, or fearing possible retaliation to a blatant refusal, plus guess culture. He wouldn’t have done something bad based on her direct refusal, and she wasn’t really from a social place where she had likely encountered violence because of such a refusal, and I know this because I went to school with her all the way from kindergarten. So I attribute it to social conditioning.
Although this is a less persuasive argument than safety, I decided that not having a problem with this action would benefit me in interacting with women, although personally I was never in that situation. What has making this change cost me? Nothing. But it, and many other updates, have allowed me the chance to be less bitter about women should I encounter these circumstances.
As far as your quotes go, yes, deciding to believe this resulted in it becoming a true belief over time. I looked at my terminal goal, and decided to pretend things that made it more likely. Sure those beliefs are now true beliefs of mine, but so what? Has that hurt me somehow?
You could argue the opposite: if you expose yourself indiscriminately to people who don’t share your values, they’ll have a better chance to change them. I think I operate under this assumption. Most people wear some kinds of masks in various situations, and I think some people who insist they shouldn’t just lack basic skills in deception and lie detection. I’m not implying people are more malicious than some people expect, I’m implying deception is generally thought of as a lesser evil than some people think.
If we talk about really hacking your preferences on some deep level, I agree with the danger of unintentionally becoming someone else.
Don’t Believe You’ll Self-Deceive
You seem to be assuming a model where one can only meet a potential mate selected at random from the population, and one’d need to spend a lot of time with her before being allowed to rule her out.
Hm, somewhat, yes. What do you believe?
I mean it’s not purely at random, of course, but surely you need to go out and meet a lot of people.
Well, not necessarily. ;-)
Social status
Someone could e.g. enjoy the company, but be so desperate for a relationship with intimacy that any non-intimate interaction with potentially interesting people would be a painful reminder of what they were missing out on. (By “intimacy”, I don’t mean just sex, but also things like trust and a permission to be open with your feelings, hold hands, kiss in a way that mainly denotes affection rather than desire, etc.)
I see.
I assumed you meant e.g. men who like to act misogynistically when among other men and find it effortful to not do so around women.
It probably helps to have both goals in some degree. I’ve actually made efforts to move my goals in the direction opposite to the one you suggest.
If you don’t enjoy the company of members of your preferred sex when you don’t think it would lead to anything, a relationship is probably not for you, anyway.