You’re noticing something really important and really interesting :)
And I think there’s something stronger, too—in an active inference framework, beliefs and desires are both just expectations about the world. Experientially, this rings true to me—the feelings of frustration at not getting what I want and at being taken off guard by something I hadn’t even been paying attention to are very similar. It seems deeply hard to distinguish between what we want and what we believe.
Yep :)
There’s a reason “I expect you to ____” plays both roles.
This is a bit more speculative, but sometimes I think people don’t fully absorb this point: It’s not psychological, it’s neurological.
Friston takes this even further, and point out that everything is trying to do something. Because even drops of oil have to resist entropic forces otherwise they’d disperse into the surrounding water and cease to be distinguishable as a thing—and that therefore, it is a theory of “every thing” (not 100% sure this is one of the videos where he makes the pun).
So we may not be able to fully adjust for it by only manipulating psychological factors, e.g. consciously trying to be more objective or less selfish.
In fact, the harder we try to be more objective, the more we import these same distortions at the meta level. “I’m not irrational dammit! You are!”
There are solutions, and you’re right that this is not one.
But I have the sense that this simple consideration is underrated, and I hope this post can provide a reference point for it and make people take it into account in their personal deliberations.
The tricky part is that taking it into account cuts against the ability to control, which is the exact thing we don’t want to give up. So the people who have the distortions in their way are going to distort away from what you’re saying the most.
In the past, I’ve felt a sense of being overwhelmed at all these considerations, and felt tempted to just avoid thinking about them—but that can’t be the answer. We have to take the uncertainty seriously.
We’re more or less not taking the uncertainty seriously, which is proof positive that we don’t have to.
Notice what comes up when we look at this though. “But there will be consequences!”. Yep.
Declaring what we “have to” do functions as another way to get us out of that uncomfortable uncertainty, huh?
You’re noticing something really important and really interesting :)
Yep :)
There’s a reason “I expect you to ____” plays both roles.
Oh no, it’s deeper than that.
I figured this stuff out in part by trying to design an optimal temperature controller and noticing that it necessarily applies to anything that tries to do anything.
Friston takes this even further, and point out that everything is trying to do something. Because even drops of oil have to resist entropic forces otherwise they’d disperse into the surrounding water and cease to be distinguishable as a thing—and that therefore, it is a theory of “every thing” (not 100% sure this is one of the videos where he makes the pun).
In fact, the harder we try to be more objective, the more we import these same distortions at the meta level. “I’m not irrational dammit! You are!”
There are solutions, and you’re right that this is not one.
The tricky part is that taking it into account cuts against the ability to control, which is the exact thing we don’t want to give up. So the people who have the distortions in their way are going to distort away from what you’re saying the most.
We’re more or less not taking the uncertainty seriously, which is proof positive that we don’t have to.
Notice what comes up when we look at this though. “But there will be consequences!”. Yep.
Declaring what we “have to” do functions as another way to get us out of that uncomfortable uncertainty, huh?
You might like Valentine’s video No need for “should”