This suggests the core thesis is mistaken: it’s not that people are innately evil, it’s that they’ve learned a bad strategy to get what they want and are trapped in a local maximum where that strategy keeps working and other strategies are locally worse even if they would be globally better if they took the time to reorient themselves to those alternative strategies.
Are you advocating blank statism where humans can freely chose their own strategies without regards for various inbuild heuristics? A lot of humans engaging in evil behavior (strategies that are not optimal for any goal) is one of Michael Vassar’s thesis. As I said in the other post, I did notice one very minor action that falls in that category (it was also very far from a normal strategy for me).
Given that you also have plenty of awareness training I would expect that you will find such impulses as well if you look for them in interaction with friends (especially one’s where you tell the friend about something where you have more expertise).
Not at all, only that values and actions taken to achieve those values are not the same thing and that people can change strategies. It’d be too far a jump to go to supposing folks are a blank slate, and we need not consider the question anyway, since the author doesn’t go so far as to propose something we need try to resolve by making such a strong claim. I am only saying that the author is mistaken about the idea that strategies are terminal.
For myself, if I look at myself and ask “why did I put so-and-so down” what I don’t find is “oh, I want to put people down”, I find “oh, I thought that if I did that it would make me look better in comparison” or something like that, where a deeper value is being served: making myself look good.
For myself, if I look at myself and ask “why did I put so-and-so down” what I don’t find is “oh, I want to put people down”, I find “oh, I thought that if I did that it would make me look better in comparison” or something like that, where a deeper value is being served: making myself look good.
If there’s an audience “making myself look good” seems to be a plausible end. If there’s however no audience and I don’t have any reason that my friends considers people who cause him pain to look good, I fail to see how that would be an end for the strategy and the impulse is still there in some situations.
It’s seems to me like a strategy that’s completely maladaptive in a 1-on-1 context with a person with whom I want to relate as friends.
Humans are social creatures. We often assume there is an audience even when there isn’t one. Even if there isn’t one, there’s still the audience of me observing myself and making judgments about how good I look to myself.
You’re right that this seems to be a maladaptive strategy, but it’s also worth remembering that humans are bounded agents. I mean, humans seem to actually do the thing I’ve described, and a reasonable explanation is that they are short sighted in policy planning.
Are you advocating blank statism where humans can freely chose their own strategies without regards for various inbuild heuristics? A lot of humans engaging in evil behavior (strategies that are not optimal for any goal) is one of Michael Vassar’s thesis. As I said in the other post, I did notice one very minor action that falls in that category (it was also very far from a normal strategy for me).
Given that you also have plenty of awareness training I would expect that you will find such impulses as well if you look for them in interaction with friends (especially one’s where you tell the friend about something where you have more expertise).
Not at all, only that values and actions taken to achieve those values are not the same thing and that people can change strategies. It’d be too far a jump to go to supposing folks are a blank slate, and we need not consider the question anyway, since the author doesn’t go so far as to propose something we need try to resolve by making such a strong claim. I am only saying that the author is mistaken about the idea that strategies are terminal.
For myself, if I look at myself and ask “why did I put so-and-so down” what I don’t find is “oh, I want to put people down”, I find “oh, I thought that if I did that it would make me look better in comparison” or something like that, where a deeper value is being served: making myself look good.
If there’s an audience “making myself look good” seems to be a plausible end. If there’s however no audience and I don’t have any reason that my friends considers people who cause him pain to look good, I fail to see how that would be an end for the strategy and the impulse is still there in some situations.
It’s seems to me like a strategy that’s completely maladaptive in a 1-on-1 context with a person with whom I want to relate as friends.
Humans are social creatures. We often assume there is an audience even when there isn’t one. Even if there isn’t one, there’s still the audience of me observing myself and making judgments about how good I look to myself.
You’re right that this seems to be a maladaptive strategy, but it’s also worth remembering that humans are bounded agents. I mean, humans seem to actually do the thing I’ve described, and a reasonable explanation is that they are short sighted in policy planning.