I don’t think the purpose of the ego syntonic/dystonic distinction is to get rid of guilt, but to create a more socially acceptable framing, which may accompany guilt.
I’m confused because in the post you wrote:
Under Trivers’ hypothesis, the compulsion for heroin works the same way. The heroin addict’s definitely going to get that heroin, but by presenting the desire in the form of an external compulsion, the unconscious saves the heroin addict from the guilt of “choosing” heroin.
Which makes it sound like the purpose of the ego syntonic/dystonic distinction is to get rid of guilt. Are you actually saying that the purpose is really to create a more socially acceptable framing, but as a side effect it might sometimes alleviate guilt?
I think this is a case where I knew what I meant and so I wrote something that activated the appropriate ideas in my head but was misleading and unable to communicate the appropriate ideas. I’ve fixed it by changing “guilt” to “social stigma”.
Thanks for the clarification. I think I agree with Nesov that conscious goals are not necessarily those that are socially acceptable. It may be that the conscious/subconscious distinction originally had much to do with signalling socially acceptable values, but I think since then our actual consciously held values have been the result of a memetic evolution where fitness is determined by many factors besides just “social acceptability”. Otherwise it seems hard to explain why some people endorse utilitarianism, others endorse egoism, still others endorse Christian deontology, and so on, even when they live in the same society.
ETA: One example of such a memetic fitness “factor” is how well the values prescribed by the meme fits with our existing intuitions about what an ethical system ought to look like, which might in turn come from thinking about something that’s not necessarily related, such as math. See my Why Do We Engage in Moral Simplification? for a more detailed example of this.
I’m confused because in the post you wrote:
Which makes it sound like the purpose of the ego syntonic/dystonic distinction is to get rid of guilt. Are you actually saying that the purpose is really to create a more socially acceptable framing, but as a side effect it might sometimes alleviate guilt?
I think this is a case where I knew what I meant and so I wrote something that activated the appropriate ideas in my head but was misleading and unable to communicate the appropriate ideas. I’ve fixed it by changing “guilt” to “social stigma”.
Thanks for the clarification. I think I agree with Nesov that conscious goals are not necessarily those that are socially acceptable. It may be that the conscious/subconscious distinction originally had much to do with signalling socially acceptable values, but I think since then our actual consciously held values have been the result of a memetic evolution where fitness is determined by many factors besides just “social acceptability”. Otherwise it seems hard to explain why some people endorse utilitarianism, others endorse egoism, still others endorse Christian deontology, and so on, even when they live in the same society.
ETA: One example of such a memetic fitness “factor” is how well the values prescribed by the meme fits with our existing intuitions about what an ethical system ought to look like, which might in turn come from thinking about something that’s not necessarily related, such as math. See my Why Do We Engage in Moral Simplification? for a more detailed example of this.