On Fri, 2002-06-07 at 19:29, Lee Corbin wrote: > Iz zat so? I'm very skeptical that it is even possible, > let alone wise, to *always* resist short term temptation. > (Strange that evolution never stumbled on endowing some > creature with only long term goals.) Not that strange, since thinking in terms of long term goals requires a comparatively sophisticated mind, and that's hard enough to evolve as it is. Now that we're beginning to get there there's no particular reason that I can see to cling on to the old ways of seizing the moment even if we know better. Except, of course, that it might feel good to our legacy brainware (which may in some cases justify yielding to a short term temptation if that is expected to pay off in increased productivity, of course). > I liked Eliezer's discussion of "macho rationality" of > Thu 6/6/2002 2:04 PM) though I'm not sure I understood > all of it. I must point out that over-reliance on long > term goals is (a) irrational (that's what over-reliance > means) (b) assumes certain notions of identity. > > (For the latter point, recall those people who claim not > to be the same person from day to day, or from year to > year: for them, sacrificing for the long haul is stupid.) Your conclusion seems to be based on the unmentioned assumption that the value system of a person should necessarily revolve around ver current identity, stable or not. For example, consider a value system where one's current self is not inherently more valuable than the possible future entities calling themselves by the same name, or than a random entity of the same complexity level at this time or the future. Thus it is entirely rational to sacrifice one's wellbeing if it is expected that a being with another identity, be it in some sense the continuation of the same being or not, will benefit in a greater amount. Personally I do tend to view my identity as transitory, and hold a conscious value system based on the ideas outlined above. (My subconscious value system tends to have some small gripes about that, though, manifesting mostly as purported subgoals of the above - ie. "you need to have some fun now if you're going to get anything reasonably sane done today/this week/ever". Luckily my suboptimal and partly irrational mental architecture isn't the issue here.) -- Mikko Rauhala - mjr@iki.fi - - WTA member -