Suppose I found out that many of my actions that seemed random were actually subtly aimed at invading Moldova, perhaps because aliens with weird preferences placed some functional equivalent of mind control lasers in my brain
I suspect you’d prefer the aliens turn off their mind-control lasers, and if you had a choice you would have preferred they did not turn on the lasers in the first place.
Once you’re corrupted, you’re corrupted. At that point we have a mind-controlled Steven wandering around and there’s not much point in trying to learn about human motivation from the behavior of humans who are mind-controlled by aliens.
what if it’s not space aliens, but an alien god [really evolution]?
Well, then its unlikely that your random unconscious actions have any ulterior motive as sophisticated as invading Moldova. Your true desires are probably just some combination of increasing your status, activities prone to make babies, and your conscious desires, assuming the conscious desires haven’t been subverted by bad philosophy.
I don’t see much harm in activities prone to make babies, so the real question here is “If I my unconscious desires lead me to have poor relationships because I’m gaming them for status, and I don’t consciously value status, would I want to fix that by changing the unconscious desires?” I think I would, if I could be sure my income wouldn’t be affected much, and the fix was well tested, preferably on other people.
But in any case, human volition is going to look like a clump of mud. It has a more-or-less well defined position, but not exactly, and the boundaries are unclear.
I suspect you’d prefer the aliens turn off their mind-control lasers, and if you had a choice you would have preferred they did not turn on the lasers in the first place.
Once you’re corrupted, you’re corrupted. At that point we have a mind-controlled Steven wandering around and there’s not much point in trying to learn about human motivation from the behavior of humans who are mind-controlled by aliens.
So the next question is, what if it’s not space aliens, but an alien god?
Well, then its unlikely that your random unconscious actions have any ulterior motive as sophisticated as invading Moldova. Your true desires are probably just some combination of increasing your status, activities prone to make babies, and your conscious desires, assuming the conscious desires haven’t been subverted by bad philosophy.
I don’t see much harm in activities prone to make babies, so the real question here is “If I my unconscious desires lead me to have poor relationships because I’m gaming them for status, and I don’t consciously value status, would I want to fix that by changing the unconscious desires?” I think I would, if I could be sure my income wouldn’t be affected much, and the fix was well tested, preferably on other people.
But in any case, human volition is going to look like a clump of mud. It has a more-or-less well defined position, but not exactly, and the boundaries are unclear.