You’re coupling a list of human desires with a list of things you consider to be problems or wastes of time, and say they’re connected by “too much” of the desire.
You fail to define “too much” (because “what our ancestors would think” is less knowable and more heterogenous than almost any other possible definition), and I think that invalidates your entire post, because it leaves me to presume “too much” is just what you disapprove of.
The idea that there can be “too much” of a desire implies a standard of how much of a desire is right and proper. You won’t find that range out in the physical world, so you’ll have to invent a standard yourself. You could probably invent one that is clearly being violated in all of your examples, if you make it so narrow any strongly emotionally motivated behavior violates it.
However, to be consistent with your quasi-evolutionary hypothesis, human activities that provide aggregate benefits to the (members of) social (sub) systems they are present in should not commonly violate your invented standard of how much of a desire is right and proper. Otherwise, you’re just not distinguishing between desires that cause “Unfriendly Natural Intelligence” and those that don’t, i.e. you’re not contributing a distinction between friendly and unfriendly.
I’m confident you cannot come up with a standard for how much of a desire is good vs. how much of it is bad that meets both of these criteria and isn’t tautological.
Also, your list of drives lacks obvious points like desire to reproduce and desire for mankind to colonize the galaxy, so I’m assuming you left them out because you couldn’t find examples where you felt “too much” of them caused problems.
Appealing to “extreme compared to what our ancestors would think”
may be unknowable in principle but I’m not the first to suggest
this as a guideline.
I agree that this isn’t precise.
I’d have assumed that it is possible to infer from context what my intended reading of “too much” or “extreme” might be.
But that is the typical mind (or knowledge ) fallacy.
Indeed as I mostly describe extremes in ″behavior″ the problem is that
Behavioral Addiction
is hard to define even for psychologists
(or maybe the phenomenon (or its spread) is too new for them to have arrived at a consensus).
But now that you have challenged me to provide a definition I’m happy to be forced to think a bit deeper about this.
I came up with this:
##Quantitative Definitions of Behavior Attachment
One could measure the economic or emotional cost to the actor of changing his behavior.
The economic cost could be measured on the individual level y
“what would you pay if you could change/get rid of the behavior?”
(this assumes the society to stay constant).
Or the economic cost could be measured on the society level:
“what economic costs for the society result from this behavior?”
(this assumes the (treatment of the) behavior to stand in isolation of other behaviors/structures/memes).
To derive the latter one would probably have to measure occurrences of actual problematic cases e.g. the number of incidences over time of
impulse control disorder
associated with the behavior in question.
If you wanted to link incidences with causes you could
compare this with the development of the corresponding industries (per country).
The above prompts the question of how to classify the behaviors but I assume that should be comparatively easy.
Instead of measuring the economic effect for the individual one could try to
measure emotions
either overall or associated with the behavior.
I don’t think it is healthy if (the same or multiple different) emotions are triggered continuously, erratically or suppressed
and outside of your control. I do not know if there is any chance whether an imbalance induced by society leads to
Mood disorder or
Personality disorder
but I woudn’t be surprised.
I assume that this both could be measured and possibly linked to behaviors/structures/memes.
##Qualitative Classification of Behavior Attachment
The following mostly applies to behaviors that are neither beneficial nor pleasurable overall (by the individual subjective experience), but might also apply to multile disjunct positive behaviors.
I propose the following types of behavior lock-in:
1) A person knows that they show a behavior, but cannot get rid of the behavior on their own (e.g. because of its addictedness, or missing knowledge of techniques to do so).
2) A person knows that they need help by others, but cannot get rid of the behavior by enlisting the help of other people or institutions (either by not knowing about such an option, no such actors being present or no means to get such persons/institutions to help).
3) A person cannot notice that they show a behavior (with its consequences) and no external person or institution is taking the initiative to help the person to get rid of the behavior (by such actors be missing, actors not knowing about the person or the problem or no means to help).
4) The external persons or institutions cannot detect the problem but only its symptoms and act delayed.
5) No possibility to address this behavior at all because this problem is inherently inaddressable by human and social systems.
This rests on a sound definition of ‘ability to act’.
To avoid issues with ‘free will’ I appeal to an operative definition:
An actor has the ability to change his behavior if
the actor is aware of relevant choices of behavior,
the actor selects a behavior change,
the choice is viable from the point of external actors and
the actor fails reliably at changing his behavior
In case this is applied to populations the last item has to be altered to e.g.
a significant fraction (in relation to the direness of the problen) of actors facing this choice fail to alter their behavior.
Where direness could be quantified as in the quantitative section above.
##Summary Definition
Given this toolset I’d propose to classify a behavior as “too extreme” if the behavior can be classified as type 3 (no societal means to help) and the behavior has objective dire consequences for the individual (at least long term emotionally scaled by the likelihood of the effects).
Examples:
Currently I think our social means to deal with gaming addiction can be classified as type 4 mostly. Same with internet addiction.
Smoking for comparison was moved by prevention and education from type 4 to type 1 or 2 mostly depending on individual abilities and social environment.
The adoration of fandom is also type 4. This is not actually seens as a bug but as a feature.
But if you consider this to have long-term negative effects as I do (at least for some fans), then you might agree that some prevention or symptom classification might be helpful.
I don’t want to rule out all such behaviors—I just want people to have a chance to know what they do. Consequences and awareness.
You’re coupling a list of human desires with a list of things you consider to be problems or wastes of time, and say they’re connected by “too much” of the desire.
You fail to define “too much” (because “what our ancestors would think” is less knowable and more heterogenous than almost any other possible definition), and I think that invalidates your entire post, because it leaves me to presume “too much” is just what you disapprove of.
The idea that there can be “too much” of a desire implies a standard of how much of a desire is right and proper. You won’t find that range out in the physical world, so you’ll have to invent a standard yourself. You could probably invent one that is clearly being violated in all of your examples, if you make it so narrow any strongly emotionally motivated behavior violates it.
However, to be consistent with your quasi-evolutionary hypothesis, human activities that provide aggregate benefits to the (members of) social (sub) systems they are present in should not commonly violate your invented standard of how much of a desire is right and proper. Otherwise, you’re just not distinguishing between desires that cause “Unfriendly Natural Intelligence” and those that don’t, i.e. you’re not contributing a distinction between friendly and unfriendly.
I’m confident you cannot come up with a standard for how much of a desire is good vs. how much of it is bad that meets both of these criteria and isn’t tautological.
Also, your list of drives lacks obvious points like desire to reproduce and desire for mankind to colonize the galaxy, so I’m assuming you left them out because you couldn’t find examples where you felt “too much” of them caused problems.
Appealing to “extreme compared to what our ancestors would think” may be unknowable in principle but I’m not the first to suggest this as a guideline.
I agree that this isn’t precise. I’d have assumed that it is possible to infer from context what my intended reading of “too much” or “extreme” might be. But that is the typical mind (or knowledge ) fallacy.
Indeed as I mostly describe extremes in ″behavior″ the problem is that Behavioral Addiction is hard to define even for psychologists (or maybe the phenomenon (or its spread) is too new for them to have arrived at a consensus).
But now that you have challenged me to provide a definition I’m happy to be forced to think a bit deeper about this. I came up with this:
##Quantitative Definitions of Behavior Attachment
One could measure the economic or emotional cost to the actor of changing his behavior. The economic cost could be measured on the individual level y
(this assumes the society to stay constant).
Or the economic cost could be measured on the society level:
(this assumes the (treatment of the) behavior to stand in isolation of other behaviors/structures/memes).
To derive the latter one would probably have to measure occurrences of actual problematic cases e.g.
the number of incidences over time of impulse control disorder associated with the behavior in question.
If you wanted to link incidences with causes you could compare this with the development of the corresponding industries (per country).
The above prompts the question of how to classify the behaviors but I assume that should be comparatively easy.
Instead of measuring the economic effect for the individual one could try to measure emotions either overall or associated with the behavior.
I don’t think it is healthy if (the same or multiple different) emotions are triggered continuously, erratically or suppressed and outside of your control.
I do not know if there is any chance whether an imbalance induced by society leads to Mood disorder or Personality disorder
but I woudn’t be surprised. I assume that this both could be measured and possibly linked to behaviors/structures/memes.
##Qualitative Classification of Behavior Attachment
The following mostly applies to behaviors that are neither beneficial nor pleasurable overall (by the individual subjective experience), but might also apply to multile disjunct positive behaviors.
I propose the following types of behavior lock-in:
1) A person knows that they show a behavior, but cannot get rid of the behavior on their own (e.g. because of its addictedness, or missing knowledge of techniques to do so).
2) A person knows that they need help by others, but cannot get rid of the behavior by enlisting the help of other people or institutions (either by not knowing about such an option, no such actors being present or no means to get such persons/institutions to help).
3) A person cannot notice that they show a behavior (with its consequences) and no external person or institution is taking the initiative to help the person to get rid of the behavior (by such actors be missing, actors not knowing about the person or the problem or no means to help).
4) The external persons or institutions cannot detect the problem but only its symptoms and act delayed.
5) No possibility to address this behavior at all because this problem is inherently inaddressable by human and social systems.
This rests on a sound definition of ‘ability to act’. To avoid issues with ‘free will’ I appeal to an operative definition: An actor has the ability to change his behavior if
the actor is aware of relevant choices of behavior,
the actor selects a behavior change,
the choice is viable from the point of external actors and
the actor fails reliably at changing his behavior
In case this is applied to populations the last item has to be altered to e.g.
a significant fraction (in relation to the direness of the problen) of actors facing this choice fail to alter their behavior.
Where direness could be quantified as in the quantitative section above.
##Summary Definition
Given this toolset I’d propose to classify a behavior as “too extreme” if the behavior can be classified as type 3 (no societal means to help) and the behavior has objective dire consequences for the individual (at least long term emotionally scaled by the likelihood of the effects).
Examples:
Currently I think our social means to deal with gaming addiction can be classified as type 4 mostly. Same with internet addiction.
Smoking for comparison was moved by prevention and education from type 4 to type 1 or 2 mostly depending on individual abilities and social environment.
The adoration of fandom is also type 4. This is not actually seens as a bug but as a feature. But if you consider this to have long-term negative effects as I do (at least for some fans), then you might agree that some prevention or symptom classification might be helpful.
I don’t want to rule out all such behaviors—I just want people to have a chance to know what they do. Consequences and awareness.