So I think the more rational and cognitively capable a human is, the more likely they’ll optimize more strictly and accurately for future reward.
If this is true at all, it’s not going to be a very strong effect, meaning you can find very rational and cognitively capable people who do the opposite of this in decision situations that directly pit reward against the things they hold most dearly. (And it may not be true because a lot of personal hedonists tend to “lack sophistication,” in the sense that they don’t understand that their own feelings of valuing nothing but their own pleasure is not how everyone else who’s smart experiences the world. So, there’s at least a midwit level of “sophistication” where hedonists seem overrepresented.)
Maybe it’s the case that there’s a weak correlation that makes the quote above “technically accurate,” but that’s not enough to speak of reward being the optimization target. For comparison, even if it is the case that more intelligent people prefer classical music over k-pop, that doesn’t mean classical music is somehow inherently superior to k-pop, or that classical music is “the music taste target” in any revealing or profound sense. After all, some highly smart people can still be into k-pop without making any mistake.
I’ve written about this extensively here and here. Some relevant exercepts from the first linked post:
One of many takeaways I got from reading Kaj Sotala’s multi-agent models of mind sequence (as well as comments by him) is that we can model people as pursuers of deep-seated needs. In particular, we have subsystems (or “subagents”) in our minds devoted to various needs-meeting strategies. The subsystems contribute behavioral strategies and responses to help maneuver us toward states where our brain predicts our needs will be satisfied. We can view many of our beliefs, emotional reactions, and even our self-concept/identity as part of this set of strategies. Like life plans, life goals are “merely” components of people’s needs-meeting machinery.[8]
Still, as far as components of needs-meeting machinery go, life goals are pretty unusual. Having life goals means to care about an objective enough to (do one’s best to) disentangle success on it from the reasons we adopted said objective in the first place. The objective takes on a life of its own, and the two aims (meeting one’s needs vs. progressing toward the objective) come apart. Having a life goal means having a particular kind of mental organization so that “we” – particularly the rational, planning parts of our brain – come to identify with the goal more so than with our human needs.[9]
To form a life goal, an objective needs to resonate with someone’s self-concept and activate (or get tied to) mental concepts like instrumental rationality and consequentialism. Some life goals may appeal to a person’s systematizing tendencies and intuitions for consistency. Scrupulosity or sacredness intuitions may also play a role, overriding the felt sense that other drives or desires (objectives other than the life goal) are of comparable importance.
[...]
Adopting an optimization mindset toward outcomes inevitably leads to a kind of instrumentalization of everything “near term.” For example, suppose your life goal is about maximizing the number of your happy days. The rational way to go about your life probably implies treating the next decades as “instrumental only.” On a first approximation, the only thing that matters is optimizing the chances of obtaining indefinite life extension (potentially leading to more happy days). Through adopting an outcome-focused optimizing mindset, seemingly self-oriented concerns such as wanting to maximize the number of happiness moments turn into an almost “other-regarding” endeavor. After all, only one’s far-away future selves get to enjoy the benefits – which can feel essentially like living for someone else.[12]
[12] This points at another line of argument (in addition to the ones I gave in my previous post) to show why hedonist axiology isn’t universally compelling: To be a good hedonist, someone has to disentangle the part of their brain that cares about short-term pleasure from the part of them that does long-term planning. In doing so, they prove they’re capable of caring about something other than their pleasure. It is now an open question whether they use this disentanglement capability for maximizing pleasure or for something else that motivates them to act on long-term plans.
If this is true at all, it’s not going to be a very strong effect, meaning you can find very rational and cognitively capable people who do the opposite of this in decision situations that directly pit reward against the things they hold most dearly. (And it may not be true because a lot of personal hedonists tend to “lack sophistication,” in the sense that they don’t understand that their own feelings of valuing nothing but their own pleasure is not how everyone else who’s smart experiences the world. So, there’s at least a midwit level of “sophistication” where hedonists seem overrepresented.)
Maybe it’s the case that there’s a weak correlation that makes the quote above “technically accurate,” but that’s not enough to speak of reward being the optimization target. For comparison, even if it is the case that more intelligent people prefer classical music over k-pop, that doesn’t mean classical music is somehow inherently superior to k-pop, or that classical music is “the music taste target” in any revealing or profound sense. After all, some highly smart people can still be into k-pop without making any mistake.
I’ve written about this extensively here and here. Some relevant exercepts from the first linked post: