There’s a simpler model for all of these examples—you’re describing conflicts between an “away-from” motivation and a “towards” motivation. These systems are semi-independent, via affective asynchrony. The second-order want is then arising as a subgoal of the currently-active goal (be alert, etc.).
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that there really aren’t “second order wants” in the system itself; they’re just an emergent property of a system with subgoals that explicitly models itself as an agent, especially if it also has goals about “what kind of person” it is desirable or undesirable to be.
It’s likely that examples 2 and 4 would both be based in self-image goals, as well as the more obvious example in 3. Clearly, non-self-image cases like #1 exist too, so it’s not strictly about such things, but self-image goals (whether “toward” or “away from”) are the most common source of lasting and emotionally-distressing conflict in people’s lives, at least in my experience.
I identified 2 and 4 as most clearly about just wanting utilons.
I suspect that all such metawants can be reduced to trade-offs in the world. There is a bad tasting alertness potion, an addictive happiness drug with side effects, and a nonintuitive offer of money.
3 is a bit harder to look at this way, I think any solution needs to work just as well for Darryl who is also homosexual and finds it repulsive, but instead desires to no longer find it repulsive.
There’s a simpler model for all of these examples—you’re describing conflicts between an “away-from” motivation and a “towards” motivation. These systems are semi-independent, via affective asynchrony. The second-order want is then arising as a subgoal of the currently-active goal (be alert, etc.).
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that there really aren’t “second order wants” in the system itself; they’re just an emergent property of a system with subgoals that explicitly models itself as an agent, especially if it also has goals about “what kind of person” it is desirable or undesirable to be.
It’s likely that examples 2 and 4 would both be based in self-image goals, as well as the more obvious example in 3. Clearly, non-self-image cases like #1 exist too, so it’s not strictly about such things, but self-image goals (whether “toward” or “away from”) are the most common source of lasting and emotionally-distressing conflict in people’s lives, at least in my experience.
I identified 2 and 4 as most clearly about just wanting utilons.
I suspect that all such metawants can be reduced to trade-offs in the world. There is a bad tasting alertness potion, an addictive happiness drug with side effects, and a nonintuitive offer of money.
3 is a bit harder to look at this way, I think any solution needs to work just as well for Darryl who is also homosexual and finds it repulsive, but instead desires to no longer find it repulsive.