Ah: this may be the underlying confusion. I don’t see the instrumentalist evo psych as bad and everything else as good. I see any deceptive, treating people as things approach as not valuing people.
I don’t see the people who brag about cheating and slag off their wives as models to aspire to. This is both in that I don’t particularly value the outcome they’re aiming for, and that I object to the deception and the treating people as things.
But on the broader point about attitude mattering: obviously it might change the activity in that way. But my point was more that you can’t step outside of your own psychology and humanity: thinking about people in this detached strategic way is not something done by a person looking in from outside the system: your sex life isn’t a game of The Sims. My intuition and experience is that doing something in a way constantly focused at trying to get individual bits of stuff out of it (’I will now buy this wine to get sex, I will now comfort my friend so that they will help me move house next week, I will try to understand this subject I’m studying so that I get a higher mark in the exam) leads to you having less fun and doing less good than engaging with things in their own terms (which is compatible with being aware of the underlying dynamics).
There’s also an issue of sincerity here, which to unpack into something that might be more appealing to your approach, is essentially game theoric. If you reassess for your benefit at every point, people can’t rely on you in tough situations. I would like people to be able to rely on me, and to be able to rely on them. Taking other people seriously and relating to them as people rather than strategies allows you to essentially pre-commit.
Ah: this may be the underlying confusion. I don’t see the instrumentalist evo psych as bad and everything else as good. I see any deceptive, treating people as things approach as not valuing people.
I don’t see the people who brag about cheating and slag off their wives as models to aspire to. This is both in that I don’t particularly value the outcome they’re aiming for, and that I object to the deception and the treating people as things.
But on the broader point about attitude mattering: obviously it might change the activity in that way. But my point was more that you can’t step outside of your own psychology and humanity: thinking about people in this detached strategic way is not something done by a person looking in from outside the system: your sex life isn’t a game of The Sims. My intuition and experience is that doing something in a way constantly focused at trying to get individual bits of stuff out of it (’I will now buy this wine to get sex, I will now comfort my friend so that they will help me move house next week, I will try to understand this subject I’m studying so that I get a higher mark in the exam) leads to you having less fun and doing less good than engaging with things in their own terms (which is compatible with being aware of the underlying dynamics).
There’s also an issue of sincerity here, which to unpack into something that might be more appealing to your approach, is essentially game theoric. If you reassess for your benefit at every point, people can’t rely on you in tough situations. I would like people to be able to rely on me, and to be able to rely on them. Taking other people seriously and relating to them as people rather than strategies allows you to essentially pre-commit.