And how does it correlate with their own stated goals or unstated desires?
Unstated desires: Hitler was right on the money. Sure, his plans didn’t quite work out. Take over the world? It’s kind of a long shot. But given the payoff and the probabilities of success (remarkably high it would seem, given how close he got) the expected utility is rather high.
And consider what was motivating him. That nearly ubiquitous drive to dominate the world. Sure, the ‘world’ was historically a bit smaller than, you know, the actual world but the unstated desire still seems to be in place. The problem with taking over the world (or the several tribes between the inhospitable desert and the uncrossable river) is it doesn’t tend to last all that long. Someone else wants a turn. And has a big stick. So you’d better make the most of raping the conquered and servicing the concubines while you’re still in power. From what I understand Hitler didn’t really take advantage of his situation from the perspective of genetic fitness. His unstated sexual goals didn’t line up too well with the ‘short lived yet prolifically sexual dominance’ reproductive strategy but I don’t really hold that against his rationality.
When all is said and done I consider even Hitler’s short lived rise to power a far more successful fulfillment of goals than Ben Franklin managed and Hitler himself an example of rationality far above the mean rather than a counterexample of successful irrationality. He declined towards the end. His paranoia went from being an incredibly well calibrated asset to a liability as burn out took over. His judgement became impaired as he tried to push himself beyond human limits with stimulants, overwork and stress. A more rational person would have deduced that he was similar to all the other humans he could see not being able to achieve superhuman feats of achievement indefinitely and made allowances for that. History may have turned out differently if he had cut down on his workload and relaxed a bit.
Unstated desires: Hitler was right on the money. Sure, his plans didn’t quite work out. Take over the world? It’s kind of a long shot. But given the payoff and the probabilities of success (remarkably high it would seem, given how close he got) the expected utility is rather high.
And consider what was motivating him. That nearly ubiquitous drive to dominate the world. Sure, the ‘world’ was historically a bit smaller than, you know, the actual world but the unstated desire still seems to be in place. The problem with taking over the world (or the several tribes between the inhospitable desert and the uncrossable river) is it doesn’t tend to last all that long. Someone else wants a turn. And has a big stick. So you’d better make the most of raping the conquered and servicing the concubines while you’re still in power. From what I understand Hitler didn’t really take advantage of his situation from the perspective of genetic fitness. His unstated sexual goals didn’t line up too well with the ‘short lived yet prolifically sexual dominance’ reproductive strategy but I don’t really hold that against his rationality.
When all is said and done I consider even Hitler’s short lived rise to power a far more successful fulfillment of goals than Ben Franklin managed and Hitler himself an example of rationality far above the mean rather than a counterexample of successful irrationality. He declined towards the end. His paranoia went from being an incredibly well calibrated asset to a liability as burn out took over. His judgement became impaired as he tried to push himself beyond human limits with stimulants, overwork and stress. A more rational person would have deduced that he was similar to all the other humans he could see not being able to achieve superhuman feats of achievement indefinitely and made allowances for that. History may have turned out differently if he had cut down on his workload and relaxed a bit.
“And consider what was motivating him. That nearly ubiquitous drive to dominate the world.”
Most people don’t actually want to conquer the world, or do much of anything, really. What most people actually want can be nicely summed up here.