Well it seems to me that a rational goal professed by a rationalist should correspond to a few anticipations (that goal is achievable, that achieving the goal will achieve some rational super goal, serve an urge, or otherwise be positive). Not an analogy but a straightforward correspondence.
Unless of course one adopts goals of the form—suppose I am the leader of the tribe and you are regular member and I tell you to defend this hill. Or vice versa. And we adopt defending of the hill as a goal without any knowledge as to why we are defending this hill and how is that linked to the urge to live or other urges. Such knowledge may be hard to convey and requirement of communication of such knowledge would easily be a handicap (especially if the language is not very well developed).
Likewise for the passed down generations goal-set of the tribe, which itself is an entity that can evolve.
I imagine that sort of thing happened a lot all the way to couple millions years back.
Detachment of goals allows us to have all sorts of screwy goals ranging from more noble varieties like pursuing higher education (which dramatically decreases the reproduction rate) to really bad ones (suicidal attacks). [Note that from evolutionary point of view those goals are all rather screwy in so much that they don’t improve reproduction rate of any particular gene]
I imagine that if biological evolution would be allowed to continue for a million years or two we would have more intelligent human with precisely 1 strong urge—to reproduce—everything else being derived as goals rationally. But as of now we got the urge system of a monkey that won’t be able to arrive at any action or decision starting from such high level goal as reproduction.
I imagine that if biological evolution would be allowed to continue for a million years or two we would have more intelligent human with precisely 1 strong urge—to reproduce
This would seem true if the only force involved in evolution were natural selection. But selection selection seems to have played a considerable role in human evolution. A horizon limited to reproduction doesn’t seem very sexy to my intuitions.
Well, in principle a: one can fake whatever signals it takes and b: the mate selection goes both ways, the effective reproducer should more often mate with another effective reproducer.
Well it seems to me that a rational goal professed by a rationalist should correspond to a few anticipations (that goal is achievable, that achieving the goal will achieve some rational super goal, serve an urge, or otherwise be positive). Not an analogy but a straightforward correspondence.
Unless of course one adopts goals of the form—suppose I am the leader of the tribe and you are regular member and I tell you to defend this hill. Or vice versa. And we adopt defending of the hill as a goal without any knowledge as to why we are defending this hill and how is that linked to the urge to live or other urges. Such knowledge may be hard to convey and requirement of communication of such knowledge would easily be a handicap (especially if the language is not very well developed).
Likewise for the passed down generations goal-set of the tribe, which itself is an entity that can evolve.
I imagine that sort of thing happened a lot all the way to couple millions years back.
Detachment of goals allows us to have all sorts of screwy goals ranging from more noble varieties like pursuing higher education (which dramatically decreases the reproduction rate) to really bad ones (suicidal attacks). [Note that from evolutionary point of view those goals are all rather screwy in so much that they don’t improve reproduction rate of any particular gene]
I imagine that if biological evolution would be allowed to continue for a million years or two we would have more intelligent human with precisely 1 strong urge—to reproduce—everything else being derived as goals rationally. But as of now we got the urge system of a monkey that won’t be able to arrive at any action or decision starting from such high level goal as reproduction.
This would seem true if the only force involved in evolution were natural selection. But selection selection seems to have played a considerable role in human evolution. A horizon limited to reproduction doesn’t seem very sexy to my intuitions.
Well, in principle a: one can fake whatever signals it takes and b: the mate selection goes both ways, the effective reproducer should more often mate with another effective reproducer.