Especially in the more distant past, making fifteen kids of which eight survive probably often resulted in eight half-starved, unskilled, and probably more diseased offspring that didn’t find viable mates, and extinguished the branch. I don’t think humans are well suited to be nearer the r-strategy end of the spectrum, despite still having some propensity to do so.
In modern times it appears much more viable, and there are some cases of humans who desired and had hundreds of children, so the “inner optimizers” obviously aren’t preventing it. Would a strong desire for everyone to have dozens or hundreds of children in times of plenty benefit their survival, or not? I don’t think think this is a straightforward question to answer, and therefore it’s not clear how closely our inner optimizer goals match the outer.
My main point here is that “wanting kids” is inner, not outer (as is basically any higher brain function that’s going to be based on things like explicit models of the future).
For a different take, think about the promiscuous male strategy, which often in the ancestral environment had very very little to do with wanting kids.
I absolutely agree that “wanting kids” is inner not outer, as is “not wanting kids” or “liking sex”. The question was how well they are aligned with the outer optimizer’s goals along the lines of “have your heritable traits survive for as long as possible”.
I somewhat agree with the original post that the inner goals are actually not as misaligned with the outer goals as they might superficially seem. Even inventing birth control so as to have more non-productive sex without having to take care of a lot of children can be beneficial for the outer goal than not inventing or using birth control.
The biggest flaw with the evolution=outer, culture/thoughts=inner analogy in general though is that the time and scope scales for evolution outer optimization are drastically larger than the timescale of any inner optimizers we might have. When we’re considering AGI inner/outer misalignment, they won’t be anywhere near so different.
Does it, though?
Especially in the more distant past, making fifteen kids of which eight survive probably often resulted in eight half-starved, unskilled, and probably more diseased offspring that didn’t find viable mates, and extinguished the branch. I don’t think humans are well suited to be nearer the r-strategy end of the spectrum, despite still having some propensity to do so.
In modern times it appears much more viable, and there are some cases of humans who desired and had hundreds of children, so the “inner optimizers” obviously aren’t preventing it. Would a strong desire for everyone to have dozens or hundreds of children in times of plenty benefit their survival, or not? I don’t think think this is a straightforward question to answer, and therefore it’s not clear how closely our inner optimizer goals match the outer.
My main point here is that “wanting kids” is inner, not outer (as is basically any higher brain function that’s going to be based on things like explicit models of the future).
For a different take, think about the promiscuous male strategy, which often in the ancestral environment had very very little to do with wanting kids.
I absolutely agree that “wanting kids” is inner not outer, as is “not wanting kids” or “liking sex”. The question was how well they are aligned with the outer optimizer’s goals along the lines of “have your heritable traits survive for as long as possible”.
I somewhat agree with the original post that the inner goals are actually not as misaligned with the outer goals as they might superficially seem. Even inventing birth control so as to have more non-productive sex without having to take care of a lot of children can be beneficial for the outer goal than not inventing or using birth control.
The biggest flaw with the evolution=outer, culture/thoughts=inner analogy in general though is that the time and scope scales for evolution outer optimization are drastically larger than the timescale of any inner optimizers we might have. When we’re considering AGI inner/outer misalignment, they won’t be anywhere near so different.