I think evpsy is general enough that a socially savvy person won’t gain much by learning about it (e.g., to a first approximation, people love sex and status and their morality is merely virtue signalling), but a less worldly person might. I personally learned about evpsy early in my childhood (probably around 4th grade), so it helped me a lot (especially since I am a damned idealist). Epistemically speaking, it’s also very satisfying to know WHY the hell people love, say, power instead of an infinity of other things that some mind can like.
Another example; Why do non-famous people waste so much time on Twitter? A normal answer might be that people are very social. Evpsy can enhance this answer by providing the reason people are so social, and also telling you that in this instance their behavior is maladaptive and they are executing the wrong heuristic. The normal answer can not give you this, because if people are just inherently social, that’s their personal characteristic that can’t be ‘wrong.’ I.e., evpsy can help us recognize which of our own values are suspect and misaligned with our core values.
In your own example of dating, this last technique can help you see that your desirability function for women probably is quite disaligned with your actual values, and you’ll gain a lot by meditating on what you really value and fixing your desirability function. The technique can be quite helpful in fixing your nutrition as well.
Lol if I was socially savvy. I would not be asking these questions. 9 years of the wrong moves in the dating game have brought me here.
In your own example of dating, this last technique can help you see that your desirability function for women probably is quite disaligned with your actual values, and you’ll gain a lot by meditating on what you really value and fixing your desirability function. The technique can be quite helpful in fixing your nutrition as well.
This is really a rather subjective thing, so the only thing I can do is produce some examples that are somewhat true for myself. Let’s name my desirability function for a mate f.
I have f( x | x is male) near zero, while I think that if my mind was architectured ideally according to my values, it’d be much higher. True, there are strong statistical differences between the sexes that make being female a good heuristic of things I like in a mate, and also there are very rare males I’d find sexy, but still, if I know a male M who has my desired characteristic, even if he is not sexy, f(M) should be much higher than zero.
I find young people more attractive, usually the younger the better. I might have a strong inclination to not even consider someone 5 years older than me for a mate. But when I think about the things I value, much of them are mental characteristics which are very rare in the population, and some of them correlate positively with age, plus the fact that older people are probably more unwanted by other people, it seems a dumb move for me to ignore them.
It’s not easy for me to produce examples for dating, because I feel my interests there are already mostly aligned. But let me give an example that feels more salient to me. I really enjoy playing civilization. When I’m playing, I always want to reach the next Schelling point of that important milestone before quitting. When I analyze my feelings and intuition though, through their evolutionary context, it’s clear to me that I am mistaking my “core” activities. My brain is categorizing something truly important like studying as a religious chore that does not produce value, while thinking of Civilization as the core activity that brings us status and power in the tribe. Of course, this is quite a fatal mistake, so I try to align myself by reminding myself that no, it is the studying that brings me status and stuff, and I should convert my “One more turns” energies into “One more pages.” This is somewhat of a successful endeavor for me; My subagents find the argument convincing and become somewhat better aligned, though they do need lots of reminding not to revert.
I think evpsy is general enough that a socially savvy person won’t gain much by learning about it (e.g., to a first approximation, people love sex and status and their morality is merely virtue signalling), but a less worldly person might. I personally learned about evpsy early in my childhood (probably around 4th grade), so it helped me a lot (especially since I am a damned idealist). Epistemically speaking, it’s also very satisfying to know WHY the hell people love, say, power instead of an infinity of other things that some mind can like.
Another example; Why do non-famous people waste so much time on Twitter? A normal answer might be that people are very social. Evpsy can enhance this answer by providing the reason people are so social, and also telling you that in this instance their behavior is maladaptive and they are executing the wrong heuristic. The normal answer can not give you this, because if people are just inherently social, that’s their personal characteristic that can’t be ‘wrong.’ I.e., evpsy can help us recognize which of our own values are suspect and misaligned with our core values.
In your own example of dating, this last technique can help you see that your desirability function for women probably is quite disaligned with your actual values, and you’ll gain a lot by meditating on what you really value and fixing your desirability function. The technique can be quite helpful in fixing your nutrition as well.
Lol if I was socially savvy. I would not be asking these questions. 9 years of the wrong moves in the dating game have brought me here.
Can you explain this in greater detail?
This is really a rather subjective thing, so the only thing I can do is produce some examples that are somewhat true for myself. Let’s name my desirability function for a mate f.
I have f( x | x is male) near zero, while I think that if my mind was architectured ideally according to my values, it’d be much higher. True, there are strong statistical differences between the sexes that make being female a good heuristic of things I like in a mate, and also there are very rare males I’d find sexy, but still, if I know a male M who has my desired characteristic, even if he is not sexy, f(M) should be much higher than zero.
I find young people more attractive, usually the younger the better. I might have a strong inclination to not even consider someone 5 years older than me for a mate. But when I think about the things I value, much of them are mental characteristics which are very rare in the population, and some of them correlate positively with age, plus the fact that older people are probably more unwanted by other people, it seems a dumb move for me to ignore them.
It’s not easy for me to produce examples for dating, because I feel my interests there are already mostly aligned. But let me give an example that feels more salient to me. I really enjoy playing civilization. When I’m playing, I always want to reach the next Schelling point of that important milestone before quitting. When I analyze my feelings and intuition though, through their evolutionary context, it’s clear to me that I am mistaking my “core” activities. My brain is categorizing something truly important like studying as a religious chore that does not produce value, while thinking of Civilization as the core activity that brings us status and power in the tribe. Of course, this is quite a fatal mistake, so I try to align myself by reminding myself that no, it is the studying that brings me status and stuff, and I should convert my “One more turns” energies into “One more pages.” This is somewhat of a successful endeavor for me; My subagents find the argument convincing and become somewhat better aligned, though they do need lots of reminding not to revert.