From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2003 - 19:14:17 MDT
At 07:55 PM 7/7/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>>Maybe the things we actually want are typically not as noble as the
>>things we want to believe that we want. Maybe we really want social
>>approval more than we admit, for example. But believing ourselves to be
>>noble may help us to convince others that we are noble, and so to
>>convince them to associate with us. Also, we may want to believe that
>>our career/spouse/etc. is just the sort of career or spouse we wanted, so
>>that we can reassure our associates that we are not considering switching
>>careers/spouses/etc.
>
>This definition of "want" seems to me to be one of the classically
>postulated failure modes in genie stories - defining what people "really
>want" as including wants they would not want to want. If someone does not
>want to want something, it is not "help" to satisfy that want. I would
>say that volition and its satisfaction should be defined by taking the
>renormalized goal system into account, including people's aspirations to
>be better people. It is not helpful if a genie defines your "wish" by
>reference to your dark, repressed desires, and in fact, it is not helpful
>if a genie defines your "wish" by inducing features of your apparent de
>facto preferences which you would reject if you understood them.
>
>What is the purpose of self-discovery if not self-alteration?
There is a key difference between wanting to want and wanting to believe
that you want. I hypothesize that people want, and want to want, ignoble
things, but that they want others to believe that they want, and want to
want, noble things. Therefore they do not want to believe that they want,
and want to want, ignoble things.
Self-alteration is primarily only at the service of things you want
(including things you want to want). So if people really want to be
ignoble, then self-alteration will only make them more so.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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