I disagree with the conjecture. I don’t think to be rational one needs to perform an unusual amount of conscious calculation per unit of time. To be rational, one must simply change one’s default settings in a specific way. This could be done bit by bit over the course of many years.
It certainly takes an unusual sum total of introspection and conscious awareness and whatever to discover just how broken and unreliable our default settings are for the modern environment, but once changed it takes no further conscious intervention to keep those settings in their new position.
For example, it might have taken a long time and a lot of conscious intervention for me to identify and stop eating junk food (or what I consider such), but it certainly no longer takes any conscious thought to reject a piece of candy. I don’t think through everything bad it could do to me or anything and weigh that against how good it would taste; I simply feel a few painful bodily sensations and think, “Ew! Can’t have that!”
So I think this comment by Jonathan_Graehl is spot on. It seems that your conjecture would only apply to people currently making an unusually large amount of changes to their thinking and behavior. Perhaps that’s the case with a lot of people on LW though.
it might have taken a long time and a lot of conscious intervention for me to identify and stop eating junk food (or what I consider such), but it certainly no longer takes any conscious thought to reject a piece of candy. I don’t think through everything bad it could do to me or anything and weigh that against how good it would taste; I simply feel a few painful bodily sensations and think, “Ew! Can’t have that!”
When I began cooking and grocery shopping on my own, I’ve thought things through and decided that it would probably be better to mostly eat fresh vegetables, beans and, rarely, some meat. I kept at it for maybe two years, but then I moved in with different people and since I didn’t have any strong reasons to stay with my old diet I began eating more junk food and sweets. I don’t feel or observe any effects, ill or otherwise.
I guess I didn’t make the relevant dietary knowledge truly part of myself. It might bite me back later, but right now I don’t have ugh-reaction to hamburgers or candy, althrough I do have a mental model of subjective yumminess as a manifestation of adaptation-execution, and I understand that this is far from being fitness-maximizing behavior in today’s environment.
Can you think of a simple way to check the territory and discover how broken and unreliable our maps have grown?
I disagree with the conjecture. I don’t think to be rational one needs to perform an unusual amount of conscious calculation per unit of time. To be rational, one must simply change one’s default settings in a specific way. This could be done bit by bit over the course of many years.
It certainly takes an unusual sum total of introspection and conscious awareness and whatever to discover just how broken and unreliable our default settings are for the modern environment, but once changed it takes no further conscious intervention to keep those settings in their new position.
For example, it might have taken a long time and a lot of conscious intervention for me to identify and stop eating junk food (or what I consider such), but it certainly no longer takes any conscious thought to reject a piece of candy. I don’t think through everything bad it could do to me or anything and weigh that against how good it would taste; I simply feel a few painful bodily sensations and think, “Ew! Can’t have that!”
So I think this comment by Jonathan_Graehl is spot on. It seems that your conjecture would only apply to people currently making an unusually large amount of changes to their thinking and behavior. Perhaps that’s the case with a lot of people on LW though.
When I began cooking and grocery shopping on my own, I’ve thought things through and decided that it would probably be better to mostly eat fresh vegetables, beans and, rarely, some meat. I kept at it for maybe two years, but then I moved in with different people and since I didn’t have any strong reasons to stay with my old diet I began eating more junk food and sweets. I don’t feel or observe any effects, ill or otherwise.
I guess I didn’t make the relevant dietary knowledge truly part of myself. It might bite me back later, but right now I don’t have ugh-reaction to hamburgers or candy, althrough I do have a mental model of subjective yumminess as a manifestation of adaptation-execution, and I understand that this is far from being fitness-maximizing behavior in today’s environment.
Can you think of a simple way to check the territory and discover how broken and unreliable our maps have grown?