Your description of tipping the scale sounds about right, but I think that it only covers two of the three kinds of scenarios that I experience:
I can easily or semi-easily tip the scale in some direction, possibly with an expenditure of willpower. I would mostly not classify this as a struggle: instead I just make a decision.
I would like to tip the scale in some direction, but fail (and instead end up procrastinating or whatever), or succeed but only by a thin margin. I would classify this as a struggle.
I could tip the scale if I just decided what direction I wanted to tip them in, but I’m genuinely unsure of what direction I should tip them in. If scenario #1 feels like an expenditure of willpower in order to override a short-term impulse in favor of a long-term goal, and #2 like a failed or barely successful attempt to do so, then #3 feels like trying to decide what the long-term goal should be. Putting it differently, #3 feels like a situation where the set of processes that do the tipping do not necessarily have any preferences of their own, but rather act as the “carriers” of a set of preferences that multiple competing lower-level systems are trying to install in them. (Actually, that description doesn’t feel quite right, but it’s the best I can manage right now.)
I now realize that I hadn’t previously clearly made the distinction between those different scenarios, and may have been conflating them to some extent. I’ll have to rethink what I’ve said here in light of that.
I think that I identify with each brain-faction that has managed to “install” “its” preferences in the scale-tipping system at some point. So if there is any short-term impulse that all the factions think should be overriden given the chance, then I don’t identify with that short-term impulse, but since e.g. both the negative utilitarian and deontological factions manage to take control at times, I identify with both to some extent.
Your description of tipping the scale sounds about right, but I think that it only covers two of the three kinds of scenarios that I experience:
I can easily or semi-easily tip the scale in some direction, possibly with an expenditure of willpower. I would mostly not classify this as a struggle: instead I just make a decision.
I would like to tip the scale in some direction, but fail (and instead end up procrastinating or whatever), or succeed but only by a thin margin. I would classify this as a struggle.
I could tip the scale if I just decided what direction I wanted to tip them in, but I’m genuinely unsure of what direction I should tip them in. If scenario #1 feels like an expenditure of willpower in order to override a short-term impulse in favor of a long-term goal, and #2 like a failed or barely successful attempt to do so, then #3 feels like trying to decide what the long-term goal should be. Putting it differently, #3 feels like a situation where the set of processes that do the tipping do not necessarily have any preferences of their own, but rather act as the “carriers” of a set of preferences that multiple competing lower-level systems are trying to install in them. (Actually, that description doesn’t feel quite right, but it’s the best I can manage right now.)
I now realize that I hadn’t previously clearly made the distinction between those different scenarios, and may have been conflating them to some extent. I’ll have to rethink what I’ve said here in light of that.
I think that I identify with each brain-faction that has managed to “install” “its” preferences in the scale-tipping system at some point. So if there is any short-term impulse that all the factions think should be overriden given the chance, then I don’t identify with that short-term impulse, but since e.g. both the negative utilitarian and deontological factions manage to take control at times, I identify with both to some extent.