If you can make a case for this, I would be very interested to read it. My current view is that a lot of “good” motivations such as altruism and intellectual curiosity are actually linked to status concerns at a deep level, and since it seems infeasible to get rid of status concerns as a motivation anyway, we should instead try to optimize our social norms and institutions to maximize the good side effects of status seeking, and minimize the bad ones.
I can’t really. I think our disagreement is subtle. I’ll explain my view and try to pin it down.
What’s bad about status is that it may cause us to optimize for the wrong goals, because it may motivate us for the wrong goals. By the time a goal is determined, status already has (or hasn’t) done its damage. Given a fixed goal, I would not consider it negative if part of the motivation was related to status.
This means it comes down to preference between two approaches. 1. Minimizing status seeking as motivations to avoid being motivated for the wrong things; 2. Changing the field so status motivations are better aligned with positive outcomes.
If I understood your position right, you think we should do #2. And I think we should do #2. I also agree that overcoming status concerns isn’t possible. But the sentence you quoted is still true, at least insofar as it relates to me. For now I’m agnostic as to whether the rest of what I’ll say here extends to anyone else.
To explain where I think your model stops working for me, I have to differentiate between the utility function U that I would like to have, and the utility function V that I actually have. The difference is that V makes me play a game when according to U I should rather read a Miri paper. Okay, now according to the master/slave post, the master has “the ability to perform surgery on the slave’s terminal values” – but I think it can access only V, not U. Among others, I think the example you give no longer works.
For example, the number theorist might one day have a sudden revelation that abstract mathematics is a waste of time and it should go into politics and philanthropy instead, all the while having no idea that the master is manipulating it to maximize status and power.
I don’t think this is possible for me. Big decisions are governed by U; the master doesn’t have access.
Now, on LW in particular, I can say with confidence that I’m not here to improve my status. I don’t write posts to improve status. But once I have written a post, then at least 70% of my concern goes into how it will make me look; and even during writing, a lesser but still significant chunk goes into that (larger for comments). That seems clearly bad. And I think it’s fairly representative of how I work in general. I’m trying to think of an area where status motivates me to do something positive that I wouldn’t otherwise do… the search doesn’t come up empty, but it’s less than your model would suggest. Removing status as a motivation entirely should be net positive.
I’m fairly confident that this explanation is correct, but again don’t know it generalizes (actually, the fact that I fully support doing #2 suggests that I don’t really expect it to generalize). The boldest thing I’ll say is that I’d be surprised if LW didn’t work better if status were taken out of the equation. I don’t expect activity to drop drastically. The link to intellectual curiosity in particular seems questionable. But I can’t make a stronger case for that, at least not yet.
Somewhat unrelated – The Elephant in the Brain suggests that the conscious part of your brain should be thought of as the press secretary, whose job it is to rationalize the things that the rest of the brain decides to do; to come up with bogus explanations for why you did what you did. This is fairly similar to your master/slave model, with the biggest difference being that the press secretary isn’t given her own (terminal) values, and the emphasis on rationalization. Obviously, I think the conscious part does have terminal values. I’d take a hybrid of them over each one.
I can’t really. I think our disagreement is subtle. I’ll explain my view and try to pin it down.
What’s bad about status is that it may cause us to optimize for the wrong goals, because it may motivate us for the wrong goals. By the time a goal is determined, status already has (or hasn’t) done its damage. Given a fixed goal, I would not consider it negative if part of the motivation was related to status.
This means it comes down to preference between two approaches. 1. Minimizing status seeking as motivations to avoid being motivated for the wrong things; 2. Changing the field so status motivations are better aligned with positive outcomes.
If I understood your position right, you think we should do #2. And I think we should do #2. I also agree that overcoming status concerns isn’t possible. But the sentence you quoted is still true, at least insofar as it relates to me. For now I’m agnostic as to whether the rest of what I’ll say here extends to anyone else.
To explain where I think your model stops working for me, I have to differentiate between the utility function U that I would like to have, and the utility function V that I actually have. The difference is that V makes me play a game when according to U I should rather read a Miri paper. Okay, now according to the master/slave post, the master has “the ability to perform surgery on the slave’s terminal values” – but I think it can access only V, not U. Among others, I think the example you give no longer works.
I don’t think this is possible for me. Big decisions are governed by U; the master doesn’t have access.
Now, on LW in particular, I can say with confidence that I’m not here to improve my status. I don’t write posts to improve status. But once I have written a post, then at least 70% of my concern goes into how it will make me look; and even during writing, a lesser but still significant chunk goes into that (larger for comments). That seems clearly bad. And I think it’s fairly representative of how I work in general. I’m trying to think of an area where status motivates me to do something positive that I wouldn’t otherwise do… the search doesn’t come up empty, but it’s less than your model would suggest. Removing status as a motivation entirely should be net positive.
I’m fairly confident that this explanation is correct, but again don’t know it generalizes (actually, the fact that I fully support doing #2 suggests that I don’t really expect it to generalize). The boldest thing I’ll say is that I’d be surprised if LW didn’t work better if status were taken out of the equation. I don’t expect activity to drop drastically. The link to intellectual curiosity in particular seems questionable. But I can’t make a stronger case for that, at least not yet.
Somewhat unrelated – The Elephant in the Brain suggests that the conscious part of your brain should be thought of as the press secretary, whose job it is to rationalize the things that the rest of the brain decides to do; to come up with bogus explanations for why you did what you did. This is fairly similar to your master/slave model, with the biggest difference being that the press secretary isn’t given her own (terminal) values, and the emphasis on rationalization. Obviously, I think the conscious part does have terminal values. I’d take a hybrid of them over each one.