“New brain” motivations as he puts them are just identity motivations.
Does Hawkins say “new brain motivations?” I thought he would deny that such a thing exists. So would I. There’s nothing that I would describe as “new brain motivations”. This is a common intuition and it has some kernel of truth, but I think that “new brain motivations” is missing what it is.
I think an urge to eat candy is algorithmically the same kind of thing as an urge to be the kind of person that kids look up to, or whatever.
I think there are a couple things going on:
The brainstem and hypothalamus are judging thoughts / plans, not futures, and you can have different “ways to think about” the same plan which result in different rewards. So you can have a thought “I want to go to the gym” which is negative-reward and so you don’t do it, or you can have a thought “I want to go to the gym and be healthy” which mixes negative and positive aspects so maybe it’s positive-reward on net and you do it. It was the neocortex which created the positive-reward framing, so there’s a temptation to think of it as a motivation that came from the neocortex. But there’s also a sense in which we did the thing because the brainstem / hypothalamus gave it a high reward, just like anything.
Some thoughts get more appealing upon reflection, and others get less. For example, “I want to skip my exercises today” might be appealing if you don’t think through the consequences, but net unappealing when you do (e.g. I’ll be less healthy). This relates to the previous bullet point: the thoughts that get more appealing upon reflection are also the thoughts where your neocortex algorithm spends time searching for a clever framing that will be motivating (positive-reward) in the moment, next time that kind of situation comes up. So we wind up thinking “I want to go to the gym and be healthy”, and then we do it. But just as the “I want to be healthy” part helps make “I want to go to the gym” more appealing by association, by the same token “I want to go to the gym” makes “I want to be healthy” less appealing by association. I think some of our intuitions around willpower are related to this dynamic: we can do low-reward things (“I will exercise”) by pairing them with high-reward thoughts (“I want to be healthy”), but the high-reward part gets dragged through the mud in the process, and eventually loses its high-reward sheen.
There are a bunch of examples of the latter. An important one is, let’s call it, self-reflective thoughts. Like “the thought of eating candy” might be positive-reward, but “the thought of myself eating candy” might be negative-reward, because I don’t want to be the kind of guy who eats candy. On reflection, my neocortex knows that “myself eating candy” is a logical consequence of “eating candy”, so that’s a thought that’s appealing when you’re not thinking hard about it, but gets less appealing upon reflection.
I think that gets back to the other thing you said. I might have conflicting desires “I want to have children” and “I like thinking of myself as the kind of person who doesn’t want to have children”. The latter could be (and probably is) reinforced by some social instincts (which come from the brainstem), just as the former is reinforced by other instincts (which also come from the brainstem).
I am in fact very interested in how those social instincts work (speculations here), and I think of those “I like thinking of myself as…” instincts as one component of our suite of social instincts.
Does Hawkins say “new brain motivations?” I thought he would deny that such a thing exists. So would I. There’s nothing that I would describe as “new brain motivations”. This is a common intuition and it has some kernel of truth, but I think that “new brain motivations” is missing what it is.
I think an urge to eat candy is algorithmically the same kind of thing as an urge to be the kind of person that kids look up to, or whatever.
I think there are a couple things going on:
The brainstem and hypothalamus are judging thoughts / plans, not futures, and you can have different “ways to think about” the same plan which result in different rewards. So you can have a thought “I want to go to the gym” which is negative-reward and so you don’t do it, or you can have a thought “I want to go to the gym and be healthy” which mixes negative and positive aspects so maybe it’s positive-reward on net and you do it. It was the neocortex which created the positive-reward framing, so there’s a temptation to think of it as a motivation that came from the neocortex. But there’s also a sense in which we did the thing because the brainstem / hypothalamus gave it a high reward, just like anything.
Some thoughts get more appealing upon reflection, and others get less. For example, “I want to skip my exercises today” might be appealing if you don’t think through the consequences, but net unappealing when you do (e.g. I’ll be less healthy). This relates to the previous bullet point: the thoughts that get more appealing upon reflection are also the thoughts where your neocortex algorithm spends time searching for a clever framing that will be motivating (positive-reward) in the moment, next time that kind of situation comes up. So we wind up thinking “I want to go to the gym and be healthy”, and then we do it. But just as the “I want to be healthy” part helps make “I want to go to the gym” more appealing by association, by the same token “I want to go to the gym” makes “I want to be healthy” less appealing by association. I think some of our intuitions around willpower are related to this dynamic: we can do low-reward things (“I will exercise”) by pairing them with high-reward thoughts (“I want to be healthy”), but the high-reward part gets dragged through the mud in the process, and eventually loses its high-reward sheen.
There are a bunch of examples of the latter. An important one is, let’s call it, self-reflective thoughts. Like “the thought of eating candy” might be positive-reward, but “the thought of myself eating candy” might be negative-reward, because I don’t want to be the kind of guy who eats candy. On reflection, my neocortex knows that “myself eating candy” is a logical consequence of “eating candy”, so that’s a thought that’s appealing when you’re not thinking hard about it, but gets less appealing upon reflection.
I think that gets back to the other thing you said. I might have conflicting desires “I want to have children” and “I like thinking of myself as the kind of person who doesn’t want to have children”. The latter could be (and probably is) reinforced by some social instincts (which come from the brainstem), just as the former is reinforced by other instincts (which also come from the brainstem).
I am in fact very interested in how those social instincts work (speculations here), and I think of those “I like thinking of myself as…” instincts as one component of our suite of social instincts.
UPDATE: You inspired me to finally finish up and post an old draft kinda related to this: see (Brainstem, Neocortex) ≠ (Base Motivations, Honorable Motivations)