I want to know true things about myself. I also want to impress my friends by having the traits that they think are cool, but not at the price of faking it–my brain screams that pretending to be something other than what you are isn’t virtuous.
I’m like this. Part of what makes it difficult is figuring out whether you’re “faking it” or not. One of the maybe-not-entirely-pleasant side effects of reading Less Wrong is that I’ve become aware of many of the ways that my brain will lie to me about what I am and the many ways it will attempt to signal false traits without asking me first. This is a problem when you really hate self-aggrandizement and aggrandizing self-deception and get stuck living in a brain made entirely of both. My “stop pretending (or believing) that you’re smarter/better/more knowledgeable than you are, jackass” tripwire trips a lot more often than it used to.
(in fact it’s tripping on this comment, on the grounds that I’m signaling more epistemic honesty than I think I possess; and it’s tripping on this parenthetical remark, for same reason; and recursively does so more when I note it in the remark. Godel, I hate you.)
Ignorance wasn’t better, but it sure was more comfortable.
In the past I’ve thought of myself as being mostly consequentialist, in terms of morality, and this is a very consequentialist way to think about being a good person. And it doesn’t feel like it would work.
Assuming I understand the two correctly, I find I espouse consequentialism in theory but act more like a virtue ethicist in practice. That is, I feel I should do whatever is going to have the best outcome, but I actually do whatever appears “good” on a surface level. “Good” can be replaced by whatever more-specific virtue the situation seems to call for. Introspection suggests this is because predicting the consequences of my own actions correctly is really hard, so I cheat. Cynicism suggests it’s because the monkey brain wants to signal virtue more than achieve my purported intent.
The distinction between pretending and being can get pretty fuzzy. I like the ‘pretend to pretend to actually try’ approach where you try to stop yourself from sending cheap/poor signals rather than false ones. That is, if you send a signal that you care about someone, and the ‘signal’ is something costly to you and helpful to the other person, it’s sort of a moot point whether you ‘really care’.
I think that in the context of caring at least, the pretending/being distinction is a way of classifying the components motivating your behavior. If you’re “faking” caring, then that implies that you need to actively spend effort on caring. Compared to a situation where the caring “came naturally” and didn’t require effort, the “faker” should be expected to act in a non-caring manner more frequently, because situations that leave him cognitively tired are more likely to mean that he can’t spare the effort to go on with the caring behavior.
Also, having empathic caring for other people is perceived as being a pretty robust trait in general: if you have it, it’s basically “self-sustaining” and doesn’t ordinarily just disappear. On the other hand, goals like “I want to fake caring” are more typically subgoals to some other goal, which may disappear. If you know that someone is faking caring, then there are more potential situations where they might stop doing that—especially if you don’t know why they are faking it.
Wow, you can care about other people in a way that doesn’t even begin to degrade under cognitive fatigue? Is that common?
I like defining ‘real’ caring as stable/robust caring, though. If I ‘care’ about my friends because I want caring about friends to be part of my identity, I consider that ‘real’ caring, since it’s about as good as I get.
This is a problem when you really hate self-aggrandizement and aggrandizing self-deception and get stuck living in a brain made entirely of both. My “stop pretending (or believing) that you’re smarter/better/more knowledgeable than you are, jackass” tripwire trips a lot more often than it used to.
So fix it. Learn more, think more, do more, be more. Humility doesn’t save worlds, and you can’t really believe in your own worthlessness. Instead, believe in becoming the person whom your brain believes you to be.
Clarification: I don’t believe I’m worthless. But there’s still frequently a disparity between the worth I catch myself trying to signal and the worth I (think I) actually have. Having worth > 0 doesn’t make that less objectionable.
I do tend to give up on the “becoming” part as often as not, but I don’t think I do worse than average in that regard. Average does suck, though.
paper-machine wants to quote you, eli. “Why are you still making excuses not to be awesome?” would have made a pretty good quote, if only you hadn’t written it on Less Wrong.
I’m like this. Part of what makes it difficult is figuring out whether you’re “faking it” or not. One of the maybe-not-entirely-pleasant side effects of reading Less Wrong is that I’ve become aware of many of the ways that my brain will lie to me about what I am and the many ways it will attempt to signal false traits without asking me first. This is a problem when you really hate self-aggrandizement and aggrandizing self-deception and get stuck living in a brain made entirely of both. My “stop pretending (or believing) that you’re smarter/better/more knowledgeable than you are, jackass” tripwire trips a lot more often than it used to.
(in fact it’s tripping on this comment, on the grounds that I’m signaling more epistemic honesty than I think I possess; and it’s tripping on this parenthetical remark, for same reason; and recursively does so more when I note it in the remark. Godel, I hate you.)
Ignorance wasn’t better, but it sure was more comfortable.
Assuming I understand the two correctly, I find I espouse consequentialism in theory but act more like a virtue ethicist in practice. That is, I feel I should do whatever is going to have the best outcome, but I actually do whatever appears “good” on a surface level. “Good” can be replaced by whatever more-specific virtue the situation seems to call for. Introspection suggests this is because predicting the consequences of my own actions correctly is really hard, so I cheat. Cynicism suggests it’s because the monkey brain wants to signal virtue more than achieve my purported intent.
Speaking of movies, I love Three Kings for this:
Archie Gates: You’re scared, right?
Conrad Vig: Maybe.
Archie Gates: The way it works is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it.
Conrad Vig: That’s a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around.
Archie Gates: I know. That’s the way it works.
The distinction between pretending and being can get pretty fuzzy. I like the ‘pretend to pretend to actually try’ approach where you try to stop yourself from sending cheap/poor signals rather than false ones. That is, if you send a signal that you care about someone, and the ‘signal’ is something costly to you and helpful to the other person, it’s sort of a moot point whether you ‘really care’.
I think that in the context of caring at least, the pretending/being distinction is a way of classifying the components motivating your behavior. If you’re “faking” caring, then that implies that you need to actively spend effort on caring. Compared to a situation where the caring “came naturally” and didn’t require effort, the “faker” should be expected to act in a non-caring manner more frequently, because situations that leave him cognitively tired are more likely to mean that he can’t spare the effort to go on with the caring behavior.
Also, having empathic caring for other people is perceived as being a pretty robust trait in general: if you have it, it’s basically “self-sustaining” and doesn’t ordinarily just disappear. On the other hand, goals like “I want to fake caring” are more typically subgoals to some other goal, which may disappear. If you know that someone is faking caring, then there are more potential situations where they might stop doing that—especially if you don’t know why they are faking it.
Wow, you can care about other people in a way that doesn’t even begin to degrade under cognitive fatigue? Is that common?
I like defining ‘real’ caring as stable/robust caring, though. If I ‘care’ about my friends because I want caring about friends to be part of my identity, I consider that ‘real’ caring, since it’s about as good as I get.
So fix it. Learn more, think more, do more, be more. Humility doesn’t save worlds, and you can’t really believe in your own worthlessness. Instead, believe in becoming the person whom your brain believes you to be.
Clarification: I don’t believe I’m worthless. But there’s still frequently a disparity between the worth I catch myself trying to signal and the worth I (think I) actually have. Having worth > 0 doesn’t make that less objectionable.
I do tend to give up on the “becoming” part as often as not, but I don’t think I do worse than average in that regard. Average does suck, though.
Why are you still making excuses not to be awesome?
Pity we can’t self quote in the quote thread.
Huh? You’ve said something you want to quote? But this isn’t the quotes thread...
paper-machine wants to quote you, eli. “Why are you still making excuses not to be awesome?” would have made a pretty good quote, if only you hadn’t written it on Less Wrong.
Well that’s nice of him.