Given more information about someone, your capacity for having {commune, love, compassion, kindness, cooperation} for/with them increases more than your capacity for {hatred, adversariality} towards them increases.
If this were true, I’d expect much lower divorce rates. After all, who do you have the most information about other than your wife/husband, and many of these divorces are un-amicable, though I wasn’t quickly able to get particular numbers. [EDIT:] Though in either case, this indeed indicates a much decreasing level of love over long periods of time & greater mutual knowledge. See also the decrease in all objective measures of quality of life after divorce for both parties after long marriages.
(I wrote my quick take quickly and therefore very elliptically, and therefore it would require extra charity / work on the reader’s part (like, more time spent asking “huh? this makes no sense? ok what could he have meant, which would make this statement true?”).)
It’s an interesting point, but I’m talking about time scales of, say, thousands of years or millions of years. So it’s certainly not a claim that could be verified empirically by looking at any individual humans because there aren’t yet any millenarians or megaannumarians. Possibly you could look at groups that have had a group consciousness for thousands of years, and see if pairs of them get friendlier to each other over time, though it’s not really comparable (idk if there are really groups like that in continual contact and with enough stable collectivity; like, maybe the Jews and the Indians or something).
So it’s certainly not a claim that could be verified empirically by looking at any individual humans because there aren’t yet any millenarians or megaannumarians.
If its not a conclusion which could be disproven empirically, then I don’t know how you came to it.
(I wrote my quick take quickly and therefore very elliptically, and therefore it would require extra charity / work on the reader’s part (like, more time spent asking “huh? this makes no sense? ok what could he have meant, which would make this statement true?”).)
I mean, I did ask myself about counter-arguments you could have with my objection, and came to basically your response. That is, something approximating “well they just don’t have enough information, and if they had way way more information then they’d love each other again” which I don’t find satisfying.
Namely because I expect people in such situations get stuck in a negative-reinforcement cycle, where the things which used to be fun which the other did lose their novelty over time as they get repetitive, which leads to the predicted reward of those interactions overshooting the actual reward, which in a TD learning sense is just as good (bad) as a negative reinforcement event. I don’t see why this would be fixed with more knowledge, and it indeed does seem likely to be exacerbated with more knowledge as more things the other does become less novel & more boring, and worse, fundamental implications of their nature as a person, rather than unfortunate accidents they can change easily.
I also think intuitions in this area are likely misleading. It is definitely the case now that marginally more understanding of each other would help with coordination problems, since people love making up silly reasons to hate each other. I do also think this is anchoring too much on our current bandwidth limitations, and generalizing too far. Better coordination does not always imply more love.
Namely because I expect people in such situations get stuck in a negative-reinforcement cycle, where the things which used to be fun which the other did lose their novelty over time as they get repetitive, which leads to the predicted reward of those interactions overshooting the actual reward, which in a TD learning sense is just as good (bad) as a negative reinforcement event. I don’t see why this would be fixed with more knowledge, and it indeed does seem likely to be exacerbated with more knowledge as more things the other does become less novel & more boring, and worse, fundamental implications of their nature as a person, rather than unfortunate accidents they can change easily.
This does not sound like the sort of problem you’d just let yourself wallow in for 1000 years.
And again, with regards to what is fixed by more information, I’m saying that capacity for love increases more.
more things the other does become less novel & more boring
After 1000 years, both people would have gotten bored with themselves, and learned to do infinite play!
That is, something approximating “well they just don’t have enough information, and if they had way way more information then they’d love each other again” which I don’t find satisfying.
Maybe there’s a more basic reading comprehension fail: I said capacity to love increases more with more information, not that you magically start loving each other.
If this were true, I’d expect much lower divorce rates. After all, who do you have the most information about other than your wife/husband, and many of these divorces are un-amicable, though I wasn’t quickly able to get particular numbers. [EDIT:] Though in either case, this indeed indicates a much decreasing level of love over long periods of time & greater mutual knowledge. See also the decrease in all objective measures of quality of life after divorce for both parties after long marriages.
(I wrote my quick take quickly and therefore very elliptically, and therefore it would require extra charity / work on the reader’s part (like, more time spent asking “huh? this makes no sense? ok what could he have meant, which would make this statement true?”).)
It’s an interesting point, but I’m talking about time scales of, say, thousands of years or millions of years. So it’s certainly not a claim that could be verified empirically by looking at any individual humans because there aren’t yet any millenarians or megaannumarians. Possibly you could look at groups that have had a group consciousness for thousands of years, and see if pairs of them get friendlier to each other over time, though it’s not really comparable (idk if there are really groups like that in continual contact and with enough stable collectivity; like, maybe the Jews and the Indians or something).
If its not a conclusion which could be disproven empirically, then I don’t know how you came to it.
I mean, I did ask myself about counter-arguments you could have with my objection, and came to basically your response. That is, something approximating “well they just don’t have enough information, and if they had way way more information then they’d love each other again” which I don’t find satisfying.
Namely because I expect people in such situations get stuck in a negative-reinforcement cycle, where the things which used to be fun which the other did lose their novelty over time as they get repetitive, which leads to the predicted reward of those interactions overshooting the actual reward, which in a TD learning sense is just as good (bad) as a negative reinforcement event. I don’t see why this would be fixed with more knowledge, and it indeed does seem likely to be exacerbated with more knowledge as more things the other does become less novel & more boring, and worse, fundamental implications of their nature as a person, rather than unfortunate accidents they can change easily.
I also think intuitions in this area are likely misleading. It is definitely the case now that marginally more understanding of each other would help with coordination problems, since people love making up silly reasons to hate each other. I do also think this is anchoring too much on our current bandwidth limitations, and generalizing too far. Better coordination does not always imply more love.
This does not sound like the sort of problem you’d just let yourself wallow in for 1000 years.
And again, with regards to what is fixed by more information, I’m saying that capacity for love increases more.
After 1000 years, both people would have gotten bored with themselves, and learned to do infinite play!
Oh my god. Do you think when I said this, I meant “has no evidentiary entanglement with sense observatiosn we can make”?
Maybe there’s a more basic reading comprehension fail: I said capacity to love increases more with more information, not that you magically start loving each other.