Interesting post! I’m excited to see more thinking about memetics, for reasons sketched here and here. Some thoughts:
--In my words, what you’ve done is point out that approximate-consequentialism + large-scale preferences is an attractor. People with small-scale preferences (such as just caring about what happens to their village, or their family, or themselves, or a particular business) don’t have much to gain by spreading their memeplex to others. And people who aren’t anywhere close to being consequentialists might intellectually agree that spreading their memeplex to others would result in their preferences being satisfied to a greater extent, but this isn’t particularly likely to motivate them to do it. But people who are approximately consequentialist and who have large-scale preferences will be strongly motivated to spread their memeplex, because doing so is a convergent instrumental goal for people with large-scale preferences. Does this seem like a fair summary to you?
--I guess it leaves out the “truth-seeking” bit, maybe that should be bundled up with consequentialism. But I think that’s not super necessary. It’s not hard for people to come to believe that spreading their memeplex will be good by their lights; that is, you don’t have to be a rationalist to come to believe this. It’s pretty obvious.
--I think it’s not obvious this is the strongest attractor, in a world full of memetic attractors. Most major religions are memetic attractors, and they often rely on things other than convergent instrumental goals to motivate their members to spread the memeplex. And they’ve been extremely successful, far more so than “truth-seeking self-aware altruistic decision-making,” even though that memeplex has been around for millenia too.
--On the other hand, maybe truth-seeking self-aware altruistic decision-making has actually been even more successful than every major religion and ideology, we just don’t realize it because as a result of being truth-seeking, the memplex morphs constantly, and thus isn’t recognized as a single memplex. (By contrast with religions and ideologies which enforce conformity and dogma and thus maintain obvious continuity over many years and much territory.)
In my words, what you’ve done is point out that approximate-consequentialism + large-scale preferences is an attractor.
I think that this is a fair summary of my first point (it also needs enough truth seeking to realise that spreading the approach is valuable). It doesn’t really speak to the point about being self-correcting/improving.
I’m not trying to claim that it’s obviously the strongest memeplex in the long term. I’m saying that it has some particular strengths (which make me more optimistic than before I was aware of those strengths).
I think another part of my thinking there is that actually quite a lot of people have altruistic preferences already, so it’s not like trying to get buy-in for a totally arbitrary goal.
Interesting post! I’m excited to see more thinking about memetics, for reasons sketched here and here. Some thoughts:
--In my words, what you’ve done is point out that approximate-consequentialism + large-scale preferences is an attractor. People with small-scale preferences (such as just caring about what happens to their village, or their family, or themselves, or a particular business) don’t have much to gain by spreading their memeplex to others. And people who aren’t anywhere close to being consequentialists might intellectually agree that spreading their memeplex to others would result in their preferences being satisfied to a greater extent, but this isn’t particularly likely to motivate them to do it. But people who are approximately consequentialist and who have large-scale preferences will be strongly motivated to spread their memeplex, because doing so is a convergent instrumental goal for people with large-scale preferences. Does this seem like a fair summary to you?
--I guess it leaves out the “truth-seeking” bit, maybe that should be bundled up with consequentialism. But I think that’s not super necessary. It’s not hard for people to come to believe that spreading their memeplex will be good by their lights; that is, you don’t have to be a rationalist to come to believe this. It’s pretty obvious.
--I think it’s not obvious this is the strongest attractor, in a world full of memetic attractors. Most major religions are memetic attractors, and they often rely on things other than convergent instrumental goals to motivate their members to spread the memeplex. And they’ve been extremely successful, far more so than “truth-seeking self-aware altruistic decision-making,” even though that memeplex has been around for millenia too.
--On the other hand, maybe truth-seeking self-aware altruistic decision-making has actually been even more successful than every major religion and ideology, we just don’t realize it because as a result of being truth-seeking, the memplex morphs constantly, and thus isn’t recognized as a single memplex. (By contrast with religions and ideologies which enforce conformity and dogma and thus maintain obvious continuity over many years and much territory.)
I think that this is a fair summary of my first point (it also needs enough truth seeking to realise that spreading the approach is valuable). It doesn’t really speak to the point about being self-correcting/improving.
I’m not trying to claim that it’s obviously the strongest memeplex in the long term. I’m saying that it has some particular strengths (which make me more optimistic than before I was aware of those strengths).
I think another part of my thinking there is that actually quite a lot of people have altruistic preferences already, so it’s not like trying to get buy-in for a totally arbitrary goal.