From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 11 2003 - 12:52:33 MDT
On 7/11/2003, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:
>>... many papers/books in philosophy and psychology, and fewer in
>>evolutionary psychology, on self-deception. ...
>Keywords? Names? Paper titles? Google fodder would be appreciated. I
>expect my current knowledge to substantially exceed the state of the art
>in philosophy, but I am interested in any bodies of experimental evidence
>from psychology, or any work in evolutionary psychology.
Most of what academia has produced isn't yet on the web. In phil see Mele,
in psych see Paulhaus, in evol psych see Trivers (all cited in
http://hanson.gmu.edu/deceive.pdf). (Some experts coming to my conference
are Robert Frank, Jay Hamilton, Dennis Krebs, Robert Kurzban, Al Mele,
Harold Sackeim, Robert Trivers, Bill von Hippel.) (I expect you
over-estimate your philosophy abilities, but then most people do.)
>>There are two classic ways to determine what people "really" want. One
>>is based on "happiness," the other on informed choice. ... The informed
>>choice metric asks whether people would choose status/power or good for
>>the tribe if they were briefly and privately informed, via enough
>>evidence to typically be persuasive to a neutral observer, ...
>
>Why do you think the informed choice metric runs this way? I would guess
>the opposite - that most people, asked to make a deliberate choice between
>status/power and the good of the tribe, would either choose the good of
>the tribe, or feel guilty about not doing so (implying that their
>renormalized volition would move in the direction of choosing the good of
>the tribe).
I don't disagree that many would feel guilty, but I'm not sure your
implication follows.
>Also, if you are talking about a major upheaval in the belief system there
>is no such thing as a "briefly informed" choice - you have to extrapolate
>major changes within the person's volition, including reactions to many
>different changes and compounded choices about those reactions.
I limited my claim to the sorts of things we've seen. We've seen how
people behave if briefly informed. We haven't seen your ideal of fully
informed post-upheaval choice.
>I would reject both metrics as adequate theories of volition or even
>instantaneous want, though the informed choice metric comes closer.
The question is what you would put in their place. There are huge and long
traditions in economics and philosophy, among other places, discussing how
to describe what people "really" want. This is another of those areas that
you shouldn't try to reinvent before surveying what has been done.
>>... most people do believe that they want to do good for the tribe. My
>>claim is that this belief is relatively isolated and ineffectual; it is
>>allowed to influence what people say and some actions that influence
>>social perceptions, but is otherwise little used.
>
>What is the justification for taking such a dark view of things? Why make
>this claim?
This is my reading of what the data tell us.
>The folk picture of people struggling between their high moral aspirations
>and their inner demons is, as far as I can tell, pretty much correct.
The folk picture that most people are much more concerned about appearing
moral than being moral is also pretty much correct.
>People die saving unrelated children. Is that a lie?
That is a pretty rare phenomena. It is rarer still in situations where
people know they will die, and know they cannot not gain social approval
from doing so.
>My own claim is that if you asked people what they cared about, what
>mattered most to them, what kind of person they wanted to be, they would
>say that the altruism is the most important part of them. Since that is
>what they tell me, why should I - or any friend of theirs - contradict
>them? The deliberative system may sometimes be weak, but it is ultimately
>in charge - or at least is the center I look to, to determine how to find
>the "person" I want to "help".
This is the heart of our dispute. As in discussions of whether the upload,
or its copy, would "really be you", there is an element of definition or
choice in looking into a complex contradictory person and saying what their
"real" preferences are. If you aren't going to appeal to any criteria
about why this is a good choice, but just declare it by definition, then
there isn't much more to talk about.
>Then why am I, who know more of my own motives, who see more of puppet
>strings, more effectively altruistic and not less? ...
If you're going to challenge every theory in psychology to explain every
case, such as why I got up at 8:00am instead of 8:10am on Tuesday, we're
never going to get anywhere. First try to explain overall trends, then try
to explain deviations.
>>When would you say that a corporation that consistently continues to
>>pollute, even though its PR denies it, "really wants" to not pollute?
>
>I wouldn't *use* the term "want" for a corporation. ... Also the above
>does not seem to be a good example of self-deception, just simple
>deliberate lying.
Corporations, and other organizations can have behavior that is very much
like individual self-deception. So its too bad that you reject such
examples, as they are much easier to analyze.
Also closely related is the question of what a nation "wants." You see, it
seems that in many ways the voting/politics person within us makes
different choices than we do personally. Personally you might buy foreign
products, or hire a foreign worker, but politically you might want to
prohibit them. It is not just that people may be ignorant about social
processes; our political selves seem to have different preferences from our
non-political selves! Politically, we talk as if we are more
high-minded. So which selves should political outcomes correspond
to? Should people get the products they would want as ordinary people, or
the products they say they want as political people?
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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