Seems to me like what happens is that redirection of sex or survival drives get caught up in some sort of stable configuration where they can never be satisfied yet the person doesn’t notice that aspect of the loop and thus keeps Doing the Thing far past the time normal people notice. Essentially they’ve goodharted themselves in a way that creates positive externalities for others.
Right, this is the kind of thing I had in mind with the phrase “pathological need to do something.” Cf. people who are obsessed with making way more money than they could ever possibly spend.
Seems to me like what happens is that redirection of sex or survival drives get caught up in some sort of stable configuration where they can never be satisfied
This seems roughly right… with some kind of tomato/to-mah-to outlook thing.
There’s a thing I’ve found myself saying, recently, which is “Hey, you know how the only two things that matter are the elimination of unnecessary suffering, and runaway sexual selection games?”
Which I don’t quite believe (in particular since it was pointed out that regular selection also is one of the sources of value in the world). But, it does seem like most of the things I value most are sexual selection competition run amok. And this certainly is goodharting the original “intended” behavior but I’m not sure that’s the frame it makes most sense to me to look through.
It’s goodharting from the point of view of natural selection’s values but it doesn’t have to be goodharting from the point of view of your values. We can enjoy art even if art is in some sense goodharting on e.g. being in beautiful places or whatever.
Seems to me like what happens is that redirection of sex or survival drives get caught up in some sort of stable configuration where they can never be satisfied yet the person doesn’t notice that aspect of the loop and thus keeps Doing the Thing far past the time normal people notice. Essentially they’ve goodharted themselves in a way that creates positive externalities for others.
Right, this is the kind of thing I had in mind with the phrase “pathological need to do something.” Cf. people who are obsessed with making way more money than they could ever possibly spend.
This seems roughly right… with some kind of tomato/to-mah-to outlook thing.
There’s a thing I’ve found myself saying, recently, which is “Hey, you know how the only two things that matter are the elimination of unnecessary suffering, and runaway sexual selection games?”
Which I don’t quite believe (in particular since it was pointed out that regular selection also is one of the sources of value in the world). But, it does seem like most of the things I value most are sexual selection competition run amok. And this certainly is goodharting the original “intended” behavior but I’m not sure that’s the frame it makes most sense to me to look through.
It’s goodharting from the point of view of natural selection’s values but it doesn’t have to be goodharting from the point of view of your values. We can enjoy art even if art is in some sense goodharting on e.g. being in beautiful places or whatever.