These definitions of shame and guilt strike me as inherently dysfunctional because they seem to rely on direct external reference, rather than referencing some sort of internal ‘Ideal Observer’ which—in a healthy individual—should presumably be an amalgamate intuition, built on top of many disparate considerations and life experience.
The internal Ideal Observer is the amalgamated averaged out result of interactions with the world and other people alive and dead. Human beings don’t come from the orangutan branch of the primate tree, we are fundamentally biologically not solitary creatures.
Our ecological niche depends on our ability to coordinate at a scale comparable to ants, but while maintaining the individual decision making autonomy of mammals.
We’re not a hive mind and we’re not atomized individuals. We do and should constantly be balancing ourselves based on the feedback we get from physical reality and the social reality we live in.
Is the Ideal Observer the thing doing that balancing? Sure. But then it becomes a very reduced sort of entity, kinda like science keeps reducing the space where the god of the gaps can hide.
There’s an inner utility function spitting out pleasure and pain based on stimuli, but I wouldn’t call that me, there’s a bit more flesh around me than just that nugget of calculation.
These definitions of shame and guilt strike me as inherently dysfunctional because they seem to rely on direct external reference, rather than referencing some sort of internal ‘Ideal Observer’ which—in a healthy individual—should presumably be an amalgamate intuition, built on top of many disparate considerations and life experience.
The internal Ideal Observer is the amalgamated averaged out result of interactions with the world and other people alive and dead. Human beings don’t come from the orangutan branch of the primate tree, we are fundamentally biologically not solitary creatures.
Our ecological niche depends on our ability to coordinate at a scale comparable to ants, but while maintaining the individual decision making autonomy of mammals.
We’re not a hive mind and we’re not atomized individuals. We do and should constantly be balancing ourselves based on the feedback we get from physical reality and the social reality we live in.
Is the Ideal Observer the thing doing that balancing? Sure. But then it becomes a very reduced sort of entity, kinda like science keeps reducing the space where the god of the gaps can hide.
There’s an inner utility function spitting out pleasure and pain based on stimuli, but I wouldn’t call that me, there’s a bit more flesh around me than just that nugget of calculation.