Yes, the story of the doctor was the inspiration for my comment. Compared to him, other “maximizers” clearly did not do enough. And as Gwern wrote, even the doctor could have done much better.
(Also, I have no evidence here, but I wonder how much of what the doctor did was a strategy, and how much was just exploiting a random opportunity. Did he become a fertility doctor on purpose to do this, or did he just choose a random high-status job, and then noticed an opportunity? I suppose we will never know.)
Thank you. Between all the helpful comments, I’ve updated my point of view and updated this essay to deprecated with an explanation + acknowledgement at the top.
On that note, I was wondering if there was any way I could tag the people that engaged me on this (cause it’s spread between 2 articles) just so I can say thanks? Seems like the right thing to do to high five everyone after a lost duel or something? Dunno, there is some sentiment there where a lightweight acknowledgement/update would be a useful thing to deliver in this case, I feel, to signal that people’s comments actually had an effect. DM’ing everyone or replying to each comment again would give everyone a notification but generates a lot of clutter and overhead, so that’s why tagging seemed like a good route.
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.)
Yes, the story of the doctor was the inspiration for my comment. Compared to him, other “maximizers” clearly did not do enough. And as Gwern wrote, even the doctor could have done much better.
(Also, I have no evidence here, but I wonder how much of what the doctor did was a strategy, and how much was just exploiting a random opportunity. Did he become a fertility doctor on purpose to do this, or did he just choose a random high-status job, and then noticed an opportunity? I suppose we will never know.)
Thank you. Between all the helpful comments, I’ve updated my point of view and updated this essay to deprecated with an explanation + acknowledgement at the top.
Woop, take credit for changing your mind!
Thanks!
On that note, I was wondering if there was any way I could tag the people that engaged me on this (cause it’s spread between 2 articles) just so I can say thanks? Seems like the right thing to do to high five everyone after a lost duel or something? Dunno, there is some sentiment there where a lightweight acknowledgement/update would be a useful thing to deliver in this case, I feel, to signal that people’s comments actually had an effect. DM’ing everyone or replying to each comment again would give everyone a notification but generates a lot of clutter and overhead, so that’s why tagging seemed like a good route.
No especially good suggestion from me. Obvious options:
You could make a comment that links to the most helpful comments.
You could make one PM convo that includes everyone (you can add multiple people to a PM convo) and link them to the comment
Agree that tagging/mentions would be nice here.
good to know, thank you!
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.)