Say there are 100 fundamental desires, and all desires stem from these 100 fundamental desires. Each can still take on any number from −1 to 1, allowing a person to care about each of these things in different proportions. Even if we restrict the values to 0 to 1, you still get conflict because what is most important to one person is not what’s most important to another, causing real value divergences.
There’s almost certainly less than 100 fundamental desires, in fact almost certainly less than 10.
If there’s 10, and if there are 10 recognizable gradations for each desire. that’s only 10^10, 10 billion permutations.
More likely there’s only 3 or 4, but more gradations, say 50. so 50^3 to 50^4 permutations. Which is not a lot, it almost guarantees that more than a 1000 people on Earth have a nearly identical set of fundamental desires for any possible combination.
I count eight fundamental desires, but they can take countless forms based on context. For example, celebration might lead one person to seek out a certain type of food, while leading another person to regularly go jogging. It’s the same motivation, but manifesting for two different stimuli.
Here are the eight fundamental desires:
Celebration, the desire to bring more of something into one’s experience
Acquisition, the desire to bring more of something into one’s influence
Insulation, the desire to push something out of one’s experience
Relaxation, the desire to push something out of one’s influence
Curiosity, the desire for unpredictable experience
Boldness, the desire for unpredictable influence
Idealization, the desire for more predictable experience
Control, the desire for more predictable influence
The four fundamental liabilities can impede us from fulfilling our desires, so people often respond by developing instrumental values, which make it easier to fulfill desires. Some of these values are tradeoffs, but others are more constructive. Values inform a society’s public policy.
For the liability of scarcity, the tradeoffs are wastefulness and austerity, and the constructive value is investment.
For the liability of disaster, the tradeoffs are negligence and susceptibility, and the constructive value is preparation.
For the liability of stagnation, the tradeoffs are decadence and dogma, and the constructive value is transcension.
For the liability of conflict, the tradeoffs are turmoil and corruption, and the constructive value is ethics.
Identical desires would not automatically lead to harmony if people want the same thing and start fighting over it. Identical values might help, if it means people support the same policies for society.
Using ethics to reconcile conflict is not a trivial set of goals, but it makes it much more possible for people to establish mutual trust and cooperation even if they can’t all get everything they want. By working together, they will likely find they can get something just as satisfactory as what they originally had in mind. That’s a society that people can feel good about living in.
That’s a valid way to look at it. I used to use three axes for them: increase versus decrease, experience versus influence, and average versus variance (or “quantity versus quality”).
I typically just go with the eight desires described above, which I call “motivations”. It’s partially for thematic reasons, but also to emphasize that they are not mutually exclusive, even within the same context.
It is perfectly possible to be both boldness-responsive and control-responsive: seeking to accomplish unprecedented things and expecting to achieve them without interference or difficulty. That’s simultaneously breaking and imposing limits through one’s influence.
Likewise, it’s possible to be both acquisition-responsive and relaxation-responsive: seeking power over a larger dominion without wanting to constantly work to maintain that power.
They’re not scalars, either—curiosity about one topic does not always carry over to other topics. There’s a lot of nuance in motivation, but having concepts that form a basis for motivation-space helps.
These motivations are not goals in and of themselves, but they help us describe what sorts of goals people are likely to adopt. You could call them meta-goals. It’s a vocabulary for talking about what people care about and what they want out of life. I suppose it’s part of the basis for my understanding of Fun Theory.
It is perfectly possible to be both boldness-responsive and control-responsive: seeking to accomplish unprecedented things and expecting to achieve them without interference or difficulty. That’s simultaneously breaking and imposing limits through one’s influence.
Likewise, it’s possible to be both acquisition-responsive and relaxation-responsive: seeking power over a larger dominion without wanting to constantly work to maintain that power.
It’s certainly possible for people to have these conflicting desires in their mind. Though I don’t see how that translates to observed desires?
Since reality must obey physical principles. (Though purely internal desires are of course relevant to the person experiencing it, the desires must be demonstrable and observable for anyone else to take it into consideration, otherwise the presumption will be that it’s made up.)
For a real world example, no amount of effort or desire can make a river go uphill and downhill simultaneously.
Someone may ‘seek to accomplish the unprecedented’ of making the river do so and ‘expect to achieve this without interference or difficulty’ but it would be so unusual an activity that a prank would be the likely first guess.
Even if they spent real resources on the river, it will just look like how you would expect it flowing downhill, or flowing uphill with a pumping system if they’re really motivated, or stagnant if perfectly level.
They could rapidly change the flow direction back and forth to try to demonstrate their desires, and simultaneously verbally claim it’s effortless, easy-as-pie, etc., and that the river’s really going both ways at once.
But this would just look like a convoluted prank to a random observer.
I’m not even sure how such a conflicting desire could be credibly demonstrated.
Maybe if they are willing to take bets that the river will in fact go uphill and downhill simultaneously, and since so it’s so effortless they’re willing to bet their life savings, home, first born, and so on? (Though it would practically be reducing themselves to penury, since there’s a 100% chance of losing the bet.)
For a physically possible but very unlikely and completely impractical desire, maybe someone has the desire to build a triple decker train wagon since they’re a train enthusiast.
How could they credibly demonstrate ‘seeking to accomplish the unprecedented triple decker wagon and expecting to achieve the built wagon without interference or difficulty.’ ?
I am skeptical of psychology research in general, but my cursory exploration has suggested to me that it is potentially reasonable to think there are 16. My best estimates are probably that there literally are 100 or more, but that most of those dimension largely don’t have big variance/recognizable gradations/are lost in noise. I think humans are reasonably good at detecting 1 part in 20, and that the 16 estimate above is a reasonable ballpark, meaning I believe that 20^16=6.5E20 is a good approximation of the number of states in the discretized value space. With less than 1E10 humans, this would predict very few exact collisions.
I would be really dubious of any models that suggest there are less than 5. Do you have any candidates for systems of 3 or 4 fundamental desires?
That covers all known activities directly, or with only one layer of abstraction in the case of ceremonies, fights, etc., for hunter-gatherers up until the invention of agriculture.
I see. I feel like honor/idealism/order/control/independence don’t cleanly decompose to these four even with a layer of abstraction, but your list was more plausible than I was expecting.
That said, I think an arbitrary inter-person interaction with respect to these desires is pretty much guaranteed to be zero or negative sum, as they all depend on limited resources. So I’m not sure what aligning on the values would mean in terms of helping cooperation.
Avoiding death and exploration are usually considered positive sum, at least intra-tribe.
Social standing relative to other tribe members is of course always zero sum by definition.
Reproduction is a mix usually, if babies are presumed to be literally born equal then it’s zero sum when the population is at the maximum limit of the local environment’s carrying capacity. Otherwise it can be positive or negative.
If I discover something first, our current culture doesn’t assign much value to the second person finding it, is why I mentioned exploration as not-positive sum. Avoiding death literally requires free energy, a limited resource, but I realize that’s an oversimplification at the scale we’re talking.
There’s almost certainly less than 100 fundamental desires, in fact almost certainly less than 10.
If there’s 10, and if there are 10 recognizable gradations for each desire. that’s only 10^10, 10 billion permutations.
More likely there’s only 3 or 4, but more gradations, say 50. so 50^3 to 50^4 permutations. Which is not a lot, it almost guarantees that more than a 1000 people on Earth have a nearly identical set of fundamental desires for any possible combination.
I count eight fundamental desires, but they can take countless forms based on context. For example, celebration might lead one person to seek out a certain type of food, while leading another person to regularly go jogging. It’s the same motivation, but manifesting for two different stimuli.
Here are the eight fundamental desires:
Celebration, the desire to bring more of something into one’s experience
Acquisition, the desire to bring more of something into one’s influence
Insulation, the desire to push something out of one’s experience
Relaxation, the desire to push something out of one’s influence
Curiosity, the desire for unpredictable experience
Boldness, the desire for unpredictable influence
Idealization, the desire for more predictable experience
Control, the desire for more predictable influence
The four fundamental liabilities can impede us from fulfilling our desires, so people often respond by developing instrumental values, which make it easier to fulfill desires. Some of these values are tradeoffs, but others are more constructive. Values inform a society’s public policy.
For the liability of scarcity, the tradeoffs are wastefulness and austerity, and the constructive value is investment.
For the liability of disaster, the tradeoffs are negligence and susceptibility, and the constructive value is preparation.
For the liability of stagnation, the tradeoffs are decadence and dogma, and the constructive value is transcension.
For the liability of conflict, the tradeoffs are turmoil and corruption, and the constructive value is ethics.
Identical desires would not automatically lead to harmony if people want the same thing and start fighting over it. Identical values might help, if it means people support the same policies for society.
Using ethics to reconcile conflict is not a trivial set of goals, but it makes it much more possible for people to establish mutual trust and cooperation even if they can’t all get everything they want. By working together, they will likely find they can get something just as satisfactory as what they originally had in mind. That’s a society that people can feel good about living in.
Does that all make sense?
Seems like your eight desires are 4 fundamental desires with the possibility of increase or decrease.
If there were 50 gradations, then 0 to −25 would signify desires for less, and 0 to +25 would signify desires for more.
That’s a valid way to look at it. I used to use three axes for them: increase versus decrease, experience versus influence, and average versus variance (or “quantity versus quality”).
I typically just go with the eight desires described above, which I call “motivations”. It’s partially for thematic reasons, but also to emphasize that they are not mutually exclusive, even within the same context.
It is perfectly possible to be both boldness-responsive and control-responsive: seeking to accomplish unprecedented things and expecting to achieve them without interference or difficulty. That’s simultaneously breaking and imposing limits through one’s influence.
Likewise, it’s possible to be both acquisition-responsive and relaxation-responsive: seeking power over a larger dominion without wanting to constantly work to maintain that power.
They’re not scalars, either—curiosity about one topic does not always carry over to other topics. There’s a lot of nuance in motivation, but having concepts that form a basis for motivation-space helps.
These motivations are not goals in and of themselves, but they help us describe what sorts of goals people are likely to adopt. You could call them meta-goals. It’s a vocabulary for talking about what people care about and what they want out of life. I suppose it’s part of the basis for my understanding of Fun Theory.
What do you think?
It’s certainly possible for people to have these conflicting desires in their mind. Though I don’t see how that translates to observed desires?
Since reality must obey physical principles. (Though purely internal desires are of course relevant to the person experiencing it, the desires must be demonstrable and observable for anyone else to take it into consideration, otherwise the presumption will be that it’s made up.)
For a real world example, no amount of effort or desire can make a river go uphill and downhill simultaneously.
Someone may ‘seek to accomplish the unprecedented’ of making the river do so and ‘expect to achieve this without interference or difficulty’ but it would be so unusual an activity that a prank would be the likely first guess.
Even if they spent real resources on the river, it will just look like how you would expect it flowing downhill, or flowing uphill with a pumping system if they’re really motivated, or stagnant if perfectly level.
They could rapidly change the flow direction back and forth to try to demonstrate their desires, and simultaneously verbally claim it’s effortless, easy-as-pie, etc., and that the river’s really going both ways at once.
But this would just look like a convoluted prank to a random observer.
I’m not even sure how such a conflicting desire could be credibly demonstrated.
Maybe if they are willing to take bets that the river will in fact go uphill and downhill simultaneously, and since so it’s so effortless they’re willing to bet their life savings, home, first born, and so on? (Though it would practically be reducing themselves to penury, since there’s a 100% chance of losing the bet.)
For a physically possible but very unlikely and completely impractical desire, maybe someone has the desire to build a triple decker train wagon since they’re a train enthusiast.
How could they credibly demonstrate ‘seeking to accomplish the unprecedented triple decker wagon and expecting to achieve the built wagon without interference or difficulty.’ ?
I am skeptical of psychology research in general, but my cursory exploration has suggested to me that it is potentially reasonable to think there are 16. My best estimates are probably that there literally are 100 or more, but that most of those dimension largely don’t have big variance/recognizable gradations/are lost in noise. I think humans are reasonably good at detecting 1 part in 20, and that the 16 estimate above is a reasonable ballpark, meaning I believe that 20^16=6.5E20 is a good approximation of the number of states in the discretized value space. With less than 1E10 humans, this would predict very few exact collisions.
I would be really dubious of any models that suggest there are less than 5. Do you have any candidates for systems of 3 or 4 fundamental desires?
Avoiding death
Reproduction
Social standing
Exploration
That covers all known activities directly, or with only one layer of abstraction in the case of ceremonies, fights, etc., for hunter-gatherers up until the invention of agriculture.
I see. I feel like honor/idealism/order/control/independence don’t cleanly decompose to these four even with a layer of abstraction, but your list was more plausible than I was expecting.
That said, I think an arbitrary inter-person interaction with respect to these desires is pretty much guaranteed to be zero or negative sum, as they all depend on limited resources. So I’m not sure what aligning on the values would mean in terms of helping cooperation.
Avoiding death and exploration are usually considered positive sum, at least intra-tribe.
Social standing relative to other tribe members is of course always zero sum by definition.
Reproduction is a mix usually, if babies are presumed to be literally born equal then it’s zero sum when the population is at the maximum limit of the local environment’s carrying capacity. Otherwise it can be positive or negative.
If I discover something first, our current culture doesn’t assign much value to the second person finding it, is why I mentioned exploration as not-positive sum. Avoiding death literally requires free energy, a limited resource, but I realize that’s an oversimplification at the scale we’re talking.
Less != zero, or negative