So let me take my current working detailed model of how human minds work and see what it says about self-esteem, a phenomenon I’m fairly familiar with as I’ve done some work on it in the past and was successful such that I used to have self-esteem “problems” and now I don’t, and the problems I do have that look sort of like issues of self-esteem have deeper roots than what is normally addressed in self-esteem self-help and positive psychology literature from what I’ve read.
To the extent that we can model human minds as hierarchies of control systems that aim to minimize prediction error and maintain various set points (presumably for adaptive reasons), we’d expect it to look like humans, using our ability to observe the behavior of others and introspect, are both trying to make correct predictions about how much esteem (seemingly a metric that tracts an important generator of status, prestige, and generalize capability to get things done) they have and maintain an amount of esteem necessary to fulfilling other preferences (i.e. minimizing the error in other predictions and maintaining other set points). This will result in a few different behaviors depending on conditions, remembering that in this model humans do thing by predicting that they will to cause the necessary neurons to fire to cause the predicted behaviors to happen:
Evidence suggests esteem is lower than thought, all else equal: person feels down, sad, dejected, etc. as they make an update away from the desired set point of current or higher esteem. This is the person who has just been let down in a bad way, like losing their job, a friend, or being told they have lost esteem.
Person feels bad that esteem is not higher, all else equal: they feel bad because they are regularly suffering prediction error while trying to aim for the amount of esteem their esteem set point suggests they should have. This is the person who is depressed or despondent that they can’t seem to do anything to get as much esteem as they think they deserve.
Person fells better after accepting they are a “loser”, all else equal: people with low self esteem sometimes identify with and revel in their low esteem, and engage in behaviors that keep their esteem low because it keeps prediction error low; in this case the set point gets revised downwards. This is the person who accepts low status as one of society’s losers and acts to reinforce that position.
Evidence suggests esteem is higher than thought, all else equal: person feels elated, excited, happy, etc. as they make an update upward that they have more esteem than their desired set point predicted they would have. This is the person who thought they were not going to get a job, make a friend, go on a date, etc. and then it happens and they are happy surprised.
Person feels happy anxiousness (manic?) that esteem is not lower, all else equal: they feel good because they are over their esteem set point but also worried that it might be prediction error and so operate out of fear of prediction error coming true and esteem being as low as the set point. This is the person who has a high paying job, a great romantic partner, or otherwise is vested with lots of esteem who also thinks it is underserved and is attached to holding on to that esteem and preventing the mistake from being realized.
Person feels better after accepting they are a “winner”, all else equal: people with high self esteem sometimes identify with and revel in their high esteem, and engage in behavior that keep their esteem high because it keeps prediction error low; this feels to many like a natural state of good, skilled, qualified, etc. people getting the rewards they feel they deserve. This is the person who accepts they are a winner and comfortably acts to keep their esteem high.
Other outcomes seem possible, those are just the situations that were salient to me.
This also suggests a way to fix self-esteem, which I think matches most of what I’ve read about it: find a way to bootstrap esteem generation such that esteem error prediction is reduced and esteem starts moving up towards the set point, and specifically adopt a belief seeing you are more esteemed than you thought is part of why you are worthing of esteem such that it causes a positive feedback loop that takes you up to and maybe even past your set point.
On the other side, it also matches what we hear about imposter syndrome: find evidence that you are not in error so that you stop being surprised and maybe also move your set point up to its new value.
Finally, it suggests a way to avoid all this suffering over esteem: learn not to have a fixed esteem set point such that you can only make prediction errors, not feel bad that your prediction is also not predicting the set point.
I should note that my answer does not address the question “what is esteem/worth/etc.?”. I think that’s a trickier question because it’s actually a whole bunch of stuff we cluster together for a wide variety of reasons as a result of dependencies in how we assess meaning in ways that we know how to make legible, so I ignore it here and just assume esteem is some kind of metric, specifically meaning that it can be measured and that the measure looks enough like a real number that we can pretend it is. Reality is likely more complicated than that, but I’m not interested in exploring a full reduction of esteem right now, so this seems a reasonable enough practical choice to at least say something as it relates to how esteem-like processes operate in the mind under this theory.
Thanks for this answer. Describing how prediction error minimization theory applies to self-esteem in such a clear way helped me understand both that theory as well as self-esteem more clearly.
I’m confused by the “way to fix self-esteem” you describe. I do not understand how “esteem generation” might reduce “esteem error prediction”. What would be a concrete example for such a process? I haven’t done any research on that topic though, except reading maybe 2 or 3 articles on LW, so I might well be missing some crucial parts of how the theory works. Can you recommend any ressources which might serve as a good starting point?
Maybe it will help if I make the model more formal, since there are multiple variables and it can be a little hard to see what’s going on if you don’t already have the intuitions to track them from normal words.
Let m be a measure of self esteem as a result of seeing some evidence e about the world (an observation). The prediction error is the extent to which E:E→M (the expectation relation that goes from evidence to a measure of self esteem) diverges from A:E→M (the relation that calculates the actual update in measure of self esteem). So prediction error looks like when E(e)=m≠A(e), and the larger the difference between E(e) and A(e) the larger the error.
A self-esteem set point, s∈M, is a measure of self esteem you are targeting such that if A(e)≠s then you want (set an expectation that E(e′)=s for some as yet unobserved evidence e′) to increase or lower your observed self-esteem A(e) such that it matches s.
Warning: This is an off-the-cuff model of the theory I just made up right now, so it’s probably non-standard and I’d have to think/read about the formalism more to fully endorse it (it’s also a little slopping in a couple places because I’m out of practice). I mean to use it only as a pedagogical tool here.
When I suggest we can fix self-esteem, I mean we can work to adjust A(e) and E(e) so that they better match, and work to alter A such that the actual esteem you observe yourself to have also matches the set point s. What that looks like in the case of wanting more esteem than you currently have and repeatedly expecting to have more esteem than you observe yourself having (the case where E(e)<A(e)) and it being true that A(e)<s. The fix in this case is to take actions that cause E(e) to rise to match A(e) and take actions that cause A(e) to rise to match s, and even better if this can be done in concert by making A conditional on |E(e)−A(e)| such that A(e) increases as A(e)−E(e) decreases towards 0.
Oh, to your other question, I have no special resources to recommend. I mostly arrived at a version of this theory on my own, then found out about Friston and perceptual control theory and was like “ah, great, someone already worked this out, one less thing for me to worry about!”.
In my recent post on value drift I had a paragraph with a bunch of links, though I think they are the things you may have already seen. For completeness and in case you missed any of the ones I liked, here it is copied into this comment:
If we tear away the idea that we might possess values, we are left with the act of valuing, and to value something is ultimately to judge it or assess its worth. While I can’t hope to fit all my philosophy into this paragraph, I consider valuing, judging, or assessing to be one of the fundamental operations of “conscious” things, it being the key input that powers the feedback loops that differentiate the “living” from the “dead”. For historical reasons we might call this feeling or sensation, and if you like control theory “sensing” seems appropriate since in a control system it is the sensor that determines and sends the signal to the controller after it senses the system. Promisingmoderntheories suggest control theory is useful for modeling the human mind as a hierarchy of control systems that minimize prediction error while also maintaining homeostasis, and this matches with one of the most detailed and longest used theories of human psychology, so I feel justified in saying that the key, primitive action happening when we value something is that we sense or judge it to be good, neutral, or bad (or, if you prefer, more, same, or less).
So let me take my current working detailed model of how human minds work and see what it says about self-esteem, a phenomenon I’m fairly familiar with as I’ve done some work on it in the past and was successful such that I used to have self-esteem “problems” and now I don’t, and the problems I do have that look sort of like issues of self-esteem have deeper roots than what is normally addressed in self-esteem self-help and positive psychology literature from what I’ve read.
To the extent that we can model human minds as hierarchies of control systems that aim to minimize prediction error and maintain various set points (presumably for adaptive reasons), we’d expect it to look like humans, using our ability to observe the behavior of others and introspect, are both trying to make correct predictions about how much esteem (seemingly a metric that tracts an important generator of status, prestige, and generalize capability to get things done) they have and maintain an amount of esteem necessary to fulfilling other preferences (i.e. minimizing the error in other predictions and maintaining other set points). This will result in a few different behaviors depending on conditions, remembering that in this model humans do thing by predicting that they will to cause the necessary neurons to fire to cause the predicted behaviors to happen:
Evidence suggests esteem is lower than thought, all else equal: person feels down, sad, dejected, etc. as they make an update away from the desired set point of current or higher esteem. This is the person who has just been let down in a bad way, like losing their job, a friend, or being told they have lost esteem.
Person feels bad that esteem is not higher, all else equal: they feel bad because they are regularly suffering prediction error while trying to aim for the amount of esteem their esteem set point suggests they should have. This is the person who is depressed or despondent that they can’t seem to do anything to get as much esteem as they think they deserve.
Person fells better after accepting they are a “loser”, all else equal: people with low self esteem sometimes identify with and revel in their low esteem, and engage in behaviors that keep their esteem low because it keeps prediction error low; in this case the set point gets revised downwards. This is the person who accepts low status as one of society’s losers and acts to reinforce that position.
Evidence suggests esteem is higher than thought, all else equal: person feels elated, excited, happy, etc. as they make an update upward that they have more esteem than their desired set point predicted they would have. This is the person who thought they were not going to get a job, make a friend, go on a date, etc. and then it happens and they are happy surprised.
Person feels happy anxiousness (manic?) that esteem is not lower, all else equal: they feel good because they are over their esteem set point but also worried that it might be prediction error and so operate out of fear of prediction error coming true and esteem being as low as the set point. This is the person who has a high paying job, a great romantic partner, or otherwise is vested with lots of esteem who also thinks it is underserved and is attached to holding on to that esteem and preventing the mistake from being realized.
Person feels better after accepting they are a “winner”, all else equal: people with high self esteem sometimes identify with and revel in their high esteem, and engage in behavior that keep their esteem high because it keeps prediction error low; this feels to many like a natural state of good, skilled, qualified, etc. people getting the rewards they feel they deserve. This is the person who accepts they are a winner and comfortably acts to keep their esteem high.
Other outcomes seem possible, those are just the situations that were salient to me.
This also suggests a way to fix self-esteem, which I think matches most of what I’ve read about it: find a way to bootstrap esteem generation such that esteem error prediction is reduced and esteem starts moving up towards the set point, and specifically adopt a belief seeing you are more esteemed than you thought is part of why you are worthing of esteem such that it causes a positive feedback loop that takes you up to and maybe even past your set point.
On the other side, it also matches what we hear about imposter syndrome: find evidence that you are not in error so that you stop being surprised and maybe also move your set point up to its new value.
Finally, it suggests a way to avoid all this suffering over esteem: learn not to have a fixed esteem set point such that you can only make prediction errors, not feel bad that your prediction is also not predicting the set point.
I should note that my answer does not address the question “what is esteem/worth/etc.?”. I think that’s a trickier question because it’s actually a whole bunch of stuff we cluster together for a wide variety of reasons as a result of dependencies in how we assess meaning in ways that we know how to make legible, so I ignore it here and just assume esteem is some kind of metric, specifically meaning that it can be measured and that the measure looks enough like a real number that we can pretend it is. Reality is likely more complicated than that, but I’m not interested in exploring a full reduction of esteem right now, so this seems a reasonable enough practical choice to at least say something as it relates to how esteem-like processes operate in the mind under this theory.
Thanks for this answer. Describing how prediction error minimization theory applies to self-esteem in such a clear way helped me understand both that theory as well as self-esteem more clearly.
I’m confused by the “way to fix self-esteem” you describe. I do not understand how “esteem generation” might reduce “esteem error prediction”. What would be a concrete example for such a process? I haven’t done any research on that topic though, except reading maybe 2 or 3 articles on LW, so I might well be missing some crucial parts of how the theory works. Can you recommend any ressources which might serve as a good starting point?
Maybe it will help if I make the model more formal, since there are multiple variables and it can be a little hard to see what’s going on if you don’t already have the intuitions to track them from normal words.
Let m be a measure of self esteem as a result of seeing some evidence e about the world (an observation). The prediction error is the extent to which E:E→M (the expectation relation that goes from evidence to a measure of self esteem) diverges from A:E→M (the relation that calculates the actual update in measure of self esteem). So prediction error looks like when E(e)=m≠A(e), and the larger the difference between E(e) and A(e) the larger the error.
A self-esteem set point, s∈M, is a measure of self esteem you are targeting such that if A(e)≠s then you want (set an expectation that E(e′)=s for some as yet unobserved evidence e′) to increase or lower your observed self-esteem A(e) such that it matches s.
Warning: This is an off-the-cuff model of the theory I just made up right now, so it’s probably non-standard and I’d have to think/read about the formalism more to fully endorse it (it’s also a little slopping in a couple places because I’m out of practice). I mean to use it only as a pedagogical tool here.
When I suggest we can fix self-esteem, I mean we can work to adjust A(e) and E(e) so that they better match, and work to alter A such that the actual esteem you observe yourself to have also matches the set point s. What that looks like in the case of wanting more esteem than you currently have and repeatedly expecting to have more esteem than you observe yourself having (the case where E(e)<A(e)) and it being true that A(e)<s. The fix in this case is to take actions that cause E(e) to rise to match A(e) and take actions that cause A(e) to rise to match s, and even better if this can be done in concert by making A conditional on |E(e)−A(e)| such that A(e) increases as A(e)−E(e) decreases towards 0.
Oh, to your other question, I have no special resources to recommend. I mostly arrived at a version of this theory on my own, then found out about Friston and perceptual control theory and was like “ah, great, someone already worked this out, one less thing for me to worry about!”.
In my recent post on value drift I had a paragraph with a bunch of links, though I think they are the things you may have already seen. For completeness and in case you missed any of the ones I liked, here it is copied into this comment: