I don’t feel my picture is invalidated by this though. Even with PFC having continuous learning with high rates, I expect that people get pointed in a certain direction that reinforces it. If you learned early that social rewards are the best rewards, then go into politics, you might have chosen an environment that continually rewards and reinforces that motivation, even if a different environment might override it. Assortative mating and association might also cause people to hang out with others reinforcing the attitudes they first developed.
(Re my accent. I reckon I watched the same as anyone else. I don’t think I don’t feel especially autistic, but there’s a claim that autistic kids learn more from media than peers. I don’t know how that ties into it continuing to shift during adulthood.)
It’s definitely possible to “get stuck” not doing X because you’ve never tried X in your life, so you don’t know what you’re missing. Sometimes it can take people many years before they try X. And sometimes they just never do, even though they would totally “take to it” if they did.
I feel like you want to say that the never-trying-X failure mode is “the rule” and I want to say that it’s “the exception” … But if so, that might not be a real disagreement, and instead we’re just thinking about different kinds of X.
I definitely agree that it can be a thing, and brought it up in Heritability: Five Battles multiple times. My examples included X = “living in Churubusco, Indiana” (§2.2.2), or X = “becoming a Soil Conservation Technician” (§2.3), or X = “joining a niche online community like rationalism” (§2.2.3).
Yes, I do think something like “X never getting rewarded enough” is closer to a rule than weird exception. Chosen environments is one dynamic. Another dynamic here is kinds I think many things are such that if you’ve specialized, they continue to be worth doing and yield rewards, and if you didn’t, there’s a huge cliff before you’d get such benefits so won’t go down that path. E.g. a child who learned to play instrumental in childhood vs not.
I’ll write my next post which is the main point I’ve been working towards, and I’ll be quite curious for your thoughts on it.
I don’t feel my picture is invalidated by this though. Even with PFC having continuous learning with high rates, I expect that people get pointed in a certain direction that reinforces it. If you learned early that social rewards are the best rewards, then go into politics, you might have chosen an environment that continually rewards and reinforces that motivation, even if a different environment might override it. Assortative mating and association might also cause people to hang out with others reinforcing the attitudes they first developed.
(Re my accent. I reckon I watched the same as anyone else. I don’t think I don’t feel especially autistic, but there’s a claim that autistic kids learn more from media than peers. I don’t know how that ties into it continuing to shift during adulthood.)
It’s definitely possible to “get stuck” not doing X because you’ve never tried X in your life, so you don’t know what you’re missing. Sometimes it can take people many years before they try X. And sometimes they just never do, even though they would totally “take to it” if they did.
I feel like you want to say that the never-trying-X failure mode is “the rule” and I want to say that it’s “the exception” … But if so, that might not be a real disagreement, and instead we’re just thinking about different kinds of X.
I definitely agree that it can be a thing, and brought it up in Heritability: Five Battles multiple times. My examples included X = “living in Churubusco, Indiana” (§2.2.2), or X = “becoming a Soil Conservation Technician” (§2.3), or X = “joining a niche online community like rationalism” (§2.2.3).
(Or sorry if I’m still missing your point.)
Yes, I do think something like “X never getting rewarded enough” is closer to a rule than weird exception. Chosen environments is one dynamic. Another dynamic here is kinds I think many things are such that if you’ve specialized, they continue to be worth doing and yield rewards, and if you didn’t, there’s a huge cliff before you’d get such benefits so won’t go down that path. E.g. a child who learned to play instrumental in childhood vs not.
I’ll write my next post which is the main point I’ve been working towards, and I’ll be quite curious for your thoughts on it.