I don’t know what goal I should have to be a guide for instrumental rationality in the present moment. I want to take this fully seriously, but for the instrumental rationality in of it self with presence.
“More specifically, instrumental rationality is the art of choosing and implementing actions that steer the future toward outcomes ranked higher in one’s preferences.
Why, my, preferences? Have we not evolved rational thought further than simply anything one self cares about? If there even is such a thing as a self? I understand, it’s how our language has evolved, but still.
Said preferences are not limited to ‘selfish’ preferences or unshared values; they include anything one cares about.”
Not limited, to selfish preferences or unshared values, what audience is rationality for?
This is the question isn’t it? Rationality can help you create and implement strategies but the choice of your goal is another matter. Of course as humans we have some build in goals that are common to everyone:
Basic Survival (food, water, warmth, selter etc.). In our era that means a job.
Social Interaction
Intimate Relationship and Family
If you have these sorted then you can decide what is important for you as a next level goal. Attempts have been made in psychology to organise goals (an example). I personally have found that there are much deeper value systems that can be experientially confirmed. A large part of the LW community seems (to my current personal assessment) to be behind in their understanding due to a kind of undetected prejudice. You see, the most advanced value systems are actually stemming from stories as can be found in stories. Myth, religion, mysticism, drama, literature etc. And there is a growing amount of evidence that they have evolved to accord with reality and not to be socially constructed (and definitely not rationally arrived at).
If your new age alert was activated due to my last statement consider the possibility of this undetected prejudice I was talking about. Check out the work of Jordan Peterson.
Unfortunately, I’m not a man who has this undetected prejudice, I’ve personally been delving into mysticism in the past through meditation. I am familiar with Jordan Peterson and have watched many of his lectures thanks to the YouTube algorithm, but I’m unsure what I have learned. Do you have any suggestion in what order to watch and learn from his lectures? I’m thinking Maps of Meaning 2017 - Personality 2017 - Biblical Series.
I’ve also tried reading his book recommendations, like Brave New World, rated at #1, but it doesn’t really seem to captivate my attention, it feels more like a chore than anything. I suppose that’s how I viewed the books after all, “I need to download this information into my brain so our AGI-system I might help create won’t wipe us out”.
Yes, Maps of Meaning 2017 and Personality 2017 are the most advanced ones as they are actual university courses. Maps of Meaning in particular provides a great answer to your question regarding goals. I found people find them hard to understand but you are on LW so I would assume you like an intellectual challenge ;-)
The bible series is interesting in itself and a bit easier than the lectures but I found Maps of Meaning to be deeper (though harder to get through). I think people used to a more systematic, sequential type of thinking can get confused by his style as he is rapidly presenting patterns through examples in multiple levels.
If you have any objections or discussion points I have created a thread regarding his view of religion, myths etc. I am trying to engage the LW community as, after studying the material for a few months, my assessment is that the points he is making are really strong and would love some strong counter arguments.
I want to go into this full-time but I’m unfortunately looking at part-time work and full-time studies (60 h / week) which annoys me deeply, and I’ve never manged to do even 10 hours a week (conscientiousness in the 2nd percentile, yes 2% of people have less in conscientiousness and uhm neuroticism in the 80th percentile). I’m thinking about skipping my studies to the government-funded school, which bribes me very well, just working 20 h a week and doing Maps of Meaning etc, 40 h a week. I wrote about it more here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/p6l/open_thread_june_26_july_2_2017/dusd
I’m not your ordinary LWer, this is not my only account. If you are looking to make people buy into this who are hyperrational and IQ’s in the 140′s, I wasn’t the targeted audience :).
I’m not your ordinary LWer, this is not my only account. If you are looking to make people buy into this who are hyperrational and IQ’s in the 140′s, I wasn’t the targeted audience :).
I am not selling anything :) I enjoy discussing ideas and would not discriminate based on intelligence (at least beyond sufficient level). IQ is a useful measurement for the capacity of manipulation of abstractions but there is no evidence that it correlates with wisdom. Indeed, in my experience, I feel it can have adverse effects. As Peterson would put it “the intellect has the tendency to fall in love with its own creations”.
Regarding your life dilemmas I do not know your circumstances but one thing I can tell you is that you are very young and there is absolutely no reason to feel so much pressure (if I read your state correctly). Your goal is clear. You need to complete your education. You have the funding for high school so take it seriously and go for it . Other goals such as the AGI one you can leave for later. Retain your flexibility as in 5 years you are not going to be the same person you are today. Identify an area of interest during the time you complete high school, be honest, patient and exercise humility for flexibility of mind. This is your time to learn so take the next years for learning and then you decide what your next step is. Don’t put the cart before the horse.
The problem seems to be that you think that you need to choose a goal. Your goal is what you are tending towards. It is a question of fact, not a choice.
Well, we have language so our discussion of goals is feeding back to the goal choosing mechanism. So apart from our ‘needs’ which we could consider base and inescapable goals we have the ability of creating imagined goals. Indeed people often die for these imagined goals. So one question among many is “How do we create and/or choose our imagined goals?”.
So all of your actions in the present moment is guided towards your brothers happiness? I didn’t mean switching between goals as situations change, only one goal.
Lots of things make me happy, from new books to walks in the woods to eating a ripe pear to handing my brother an ice cream cone.
Sometimes trying to achieve the terminal goal involves trading off which things I like more against each other, or even doing something I don’t like in order to be able to do something I like a lot in the future. Sometimes it means trying new things in order to figure out if there’s anything I need to add to the list of things I like. Sometimes it means trying to improve my general ability to chart a path of actions that lead to me being happy.
One goal, that is arguably selfish but also includes others values as input, that gets followed regardless of the situation. Does that make more sense?
That’s why I am asking here. What goal should I have? I use goal and preference interchangeably.
I’m also not expecting the goal/preference to change in my lifetime, or multiple lifetimes either.
First, goals, multiple. Second, internally generated (for obvious reasons). Rationality might help you with keeping your goals more or less coherent, but it will not help you create them—just like Bayes will not help you generate the hypotheses.
Oh, and you should definitely expect your goals and preferences to change with time.
It doesn’t make sense to have internally generated goals, as any goal I make up seems wrong and do not motivate me in the present moment to take action. If a goal made sense, then I could pursue it with instrumental rationality in the present moment, without procrastination as a means of resistance. Because it seems as it simply is resistance of enslavement to forces beyond my control. Not literally, but you know, conditioning in the schooling system etc.
So what I would like, is a goal which is universally shared among you, me and every other Homo Sapiens, which lasts through time. Preferences which are shared.
any goal I make up seems wrong and do not motivate me in the present moment to take action
You are not supposed to “make up” goals, you’re supposed to discover them and make them explicit. By and large your consciousness doesn’t create terminal goals, only instrumental ones. The terminal ones are big dark shadows swimming in your subconscious.
Besides, it’s much more likely your motivational system is somewhat broken, that’s common on LW.
a goal which is universally shared among you, me and every other Homo Sapiens, which lasts through time
Some goal, any goal? Sure: survival. Nice terminal goal, universally shared with most living things, lasts through time, allows for a refreshing variety of instrumental goals, from terminating a threat to subscribing to cryo.
I don’t know what goal I should have to be a guide for instrumental rationality in the present moment. I want to take this fully seriously, but for the instrumental rationality in of it self with presence.
Why, my, preferences? Have we not evolved rational thought further than simply anything one self cares about? If there even is such a thing as a self? I understand, it’s how our language has evolved, but still.
Not limited, to selfish preferences or unshared values, what audience is rationality for?
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality
This is the question isn’t it? Rationality can help you create and implement strategies but the choice of your goal is another matter. Of course as humans we have some build in goals that are common to everyone:
Basic Survival (food, water, warmth, selter etc.). In our era that means a job.
Social Interaction
Intimate Relationship and Family
If you have these sorted then you can decide what is important for you as a next level goal. Attempts have been made in psychology to organise goals (an example). I personally have found that there are much deeper value systems that can be experientially confirmed. A large part of the LW community seems (to my current personal assessment) to be behind in their understanding due to a kind of undetected prejudice. You see, the most advanced value systems are actually stemming from stories as can be found in stories. Myth, religion, mysticism, drama, literature etc. And there is a growing amount of evidence that they have evolved to accord with reality and not to be socially constructed (and definitely not rationally arrived at).
If your new age alert was activated due to my last statement consider the possibility of this undetected prejudice I was talking about. Check out the work of Jordan Peterson.
Unfortunately, I’m not a man who has this undetected prejudice, I’ve personally been delving into mysticism in the past through meditation. I am familiar with Jordan Peterson and have watched many of his lectures thanks to the YouTube algorithm, but I’m unsure what I have learned. Do you have any suggestion in what order to watch and learn from his lectures? I’m thinking Maps of Meaning 2017 - Personality 2017 - Biblical Series.
I’ve also tried reading his book recommendations, like Brave New World, rated at #1, but it doesn’t really seem to captivate my attention, it feels more like a chore than anything. I suppose that’s how I viewed the books after all, “I need to download this information into my brain so our AGI-system I might help create won’t wipe us out”.
Yes, Maps of Meaning 2017 and Personality 2017 are the most advanced ones as they are actual university courses. Maps of Meaning in particular provides a great answer to your question regarding goals. I found people find them hard to understand but you are on LW so I would assume you like an intellectual challenge ;-)
The bible series is interesting in itself and a bit easier than the lectures but I found Maps of Meaning to be deeper (though harder to get through). I think people used to a more systematic, sequential type of thinking can get confused by his style as he is rapidly presenting patterns through examples in multiple levels.
If you have any objections or discussion points I have created a thread regarding his view of religion, myths etc. I am trying to engage the LW community as, after studying the material for a few months, my assessment is that the points he is making are really strong and would love some strong counter arguments.
I want to go into this full-time but I’m unfortunately looking at part-time work and full-time studies (60 h / week) which annoys me deeply, and I’ve never manged to do even 10 hours a week (conscientiousness in the 2nd percentile, yes 2% of people have less in conscientiousness and uhm neuroticism in the 80th percentile). I’m thinking about skipping my studies to the government-funded school, which bribes me very well, just working 20 h a week and doing Maps of Meaning etc, 40 h a week. I wrote about it more here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/p6l/open_thread_june_26_july_2_2017/dusd
I’m not your ordinary LWer, this is not my only account. If you are looking to make people buy into this who are hyperrational and IQ’s in the 140′s, I wasn’t the targeted audience :).
Thanks for the advice by the way.
I am not selling anything :) I enjoy discussing ideas and would not discriminate based on intelligence (at least beyond sufficient level). IQ is a useful measurement for the capacity of manipulation of abstractions but there is no evidence that it correlates with wisdom. Indeed, in my experience, I feel it can have adverse effects. As Peterson would put it “the intellect has the tendency to fall in love with its own creations”.
Regarding your life dilemmas I do not know your circumstances but one thing I can tell you is that you are very young and there is absolutely no reason to feel so much pressure (if I read your state correctly). Your goal is clear. You need to complete your education. You have the funding for high school so take it seriously and go for it . Other goals such as the AGI one you can leave for later. Retain your flexibility as in 5 years you are not going to be the same person you are today. Identify an area of interest during the time you complete high school, be honest, patient and exercise humility for flexibility of mind. This is your time to learn so take the next years for learning and then you decide what your next step is. Don’t put the cart before the horse.
The problem seems to be that you think that you need to choose a goal. Your goal is what you are tending towards. It is a question of fact, not a choice.
Well, we have language so our discussion of goals is feeding back to the goal choosing mechanism. So apart from our ‘needs’ which we could consider base and inescapable goals we have the ability of creating imagined goals. Indeed people often die for these imagined goals. So one question among many is “How do we create and/or choose our imagined goals?”.
Your preferences can include other people’s well being. I have a strong preference that my brother be happy, for example.
So all of your actions in the present moment is guided towards your brothers happiness? I didn’t mean switching between goals as situations change, only one goal.
My terminal goal is that I exist and be happy.
Lots of things make me happy, from new books to walks in the woods to eating a ripe pear to handing my brother an ice cream cone.
Sometimes trying to achieve the terminal goal involves trading off which things I like more against each other, or even doing something I don’t like in order to be able to do something I like a lot in the future. Sometimes it means trying new things in order to figure out if there’s anything I need to add to the list of things I like. Sometimes it means trying to improve my general ability to chart a path of actions that lead to me being happy.
One goal, that is arguably selfish but also includes others values as input, that gets followed regardless of the situation. Does that make more sense?
What are your other options?
That’s why I am asking here. What goal should I have? I use goal and preference interchangeably. I’m also not expecting the goal/preference to change in my lifetime, or multiple lifetimes either.
First, goals, multiple. Second, internally generated (for obvious reasons). Rationality might help you with keeping your goals more or less coherent, but it will not help you create them—just like Bayes will not help you generate the hypotheses.
Oh, and you should definitely expect your goals and preferences to change with time.
It doesn’t make sense to have internally generated goals, as any goal I make up seems wrong and do not motivate me in the present moment to take action. If a goal made sense, then I could pursue it with instrumental rationality in the present moment, without procrastination as a means of resistance. Because it seems as it simply is resistance of enslavement to forces beyond my control. Not literally, but you know, conditioning in the schooling system etc.
So what I would like, is a goal which is universally shared among you, me and every other Homo Sapiens, which lasts through time. Preferences which are shared.
Yeah, that’s exactly how motivation works .
You are not supposed to “make up” goals, you’re supposed to discover them and make them explicit. By and large your consciousness doesn’t create terminal goals, only instrumental ones. The terminal ones are big dark shadows swimming in your subconscious.
Besides, it’s much more likely your motivational system is somewhat broken, that’s common on LW.
Some goal, any goal? Sure: survival. Nice terminal goal, universally shared with most living things, lasts through time, allows for a refreshing variety of instrumental goals, from terminating a threat to subscribing to cryo.