In return, your new disclaimer at the beginning of the article made me notice something I was confused about—whether we should apply the label “X maximizer” only to someone who actually achieves the highest possible value of X, or also to someone who tries but maybe fails. In other words, are we only talking about internal motivation, or describing the actual outcome and expecting perfection?
To use an analogy, imagine a chess-playing algorithm. It is correct to call it a “chess victory maximizer”? On one hand, the algorithm does not care about anything other than winning at chess. On the other hand, if a better algorithm comes later and defeats the former one, will we say that the former one is not an actual chess victory maximizer, because it did some (in hindsight) non-victory-maximizing moves, which is how it lost the game?
When talking about humans, imagine that a random sci-fi mutation turns someone into a literal fitness maximizer, but at the same time, that human’s IQ remains only 100. So the human would literally stop caring about anything other than reproduction, but maybe would not be smart enough to notice the most efficient strategy, and would use a less efficient one. Would it still be okay to call such human a fitness maximizer? Is it about “trying, within your limits”, or is it “doing the theoretically best thing”?
I suppose, if I talked to such guy, and told him e.g. “hey, do you realize that donating at sperm clinic would result in way more babies than just hooking up with someone every night and having unprotected sex?”, if the guy would immediately react by “oh shit, no more sex anymore, I need to save all my sperms for donation” then I would see no objection to calling him a maximizer. His cognitive skills are weak, but his motivation is flawless.
(But I still stand by my original point, that humans are not even like this. The guys who supposedly maximize the number of their children would actually not be willing to give up sex forever, if it resulted in more babies. Which means they care about some combination of pleasure and babies.)
In return, your new disclaimer at the beginning of the article made me notice something I was confused about—whether we should apply the label “X maximizer” only to someone who actually achieves the highest possible value of X, or also to someone who tries but maybe fails. In other words, are we only talking about internal motivation, or describing the actual outcome and expecting perfection?
To use an analogy, imagine a chess-playing algorithm. It is correct to call it a “chess victory maximizer”? On one hand, the algorithm does not care about anything other than winning at chess. On the other hand, if a better algorithm comes later and defeats the former one, will we say that the former one is not an actual chess victory maximizer, because it did some (in hindsight) non-victory-maximizing moves, which is how it lost the game?
When talking about humans, imagine that a random sci-fi mutation turns someone into a literal fitness maximizer, but at the same time, that human’s IQ remains only 100. So the human would literally stop caring about anything other than reproduction, but maybe would not be smart enough to notice the most efficient strategy, and would use a less efficient one. Would it still be okay to call such human a fitness maximizer? Is it about “trying, within your limits”, or is it “doing the theoretically best thing”?
I suppose, if I talked to such guy, and told him e.g. “hey, do you realize that donating at sperm clinic would result in way more babies than just hooking up with someone every night and having unprotected sex?”, if the guy would immediately react by “oh shit, no more sex anymore, I need to save all my sperms for donation” then I would see no objection to calling him a maximizer. His cognitive skills are weak, but his motivation is flawless.
(But I still stand by my original point, that humans are not even like this. The guys who supposedly maximize the number of their children would actually not be willing to give up sex forever, if it resulted in more babies. Which means they care about some combination of pleasure and babies.)