A young colleague recently said he didn't want to end up like older folks he knew who didn't keep up with new music fashions. Some of us older folks suggested he probably would become like us, and he would probably like it. He was horrified.
Because all those people are different, obviously.
By which I mean people in the same peer group who made similar choices nevertheless had wildly different outcomes. Some people that marry are eternal Honeymooners, others went through infidelity and humiliating divorce. On what basis do you decide which one will happen to you?
Also I don't see why the younger colleague should accept he'll be like the older people who don't have evolving music tastes, when there are plenty of older people that do have such tastes*. Whose experiences should he accept?
Yet all around them are other folks who are old, married, etc. - why not just accept those experiences as a good predictions of such futures?
Because all those people are different, obviously.
Women made more accurate predictions about how much they would enjoy a date with a man when they knew how much another woman in their social network enjoyed dating the man than when they read the man’s personal profile and saw his photograph.
This is actually just an example of "mate choice copying".
I'd like to have a way of measuring whether the fact that I don't keep up with new music is a sign of getting old.
I don't keep up with new music; but it's also true that<ul><li>I don't dislike new music; I don't even hear it as being significantly different from the music I heard in college. Unlike my parents, who found new music different and distasteful, I find it not different enough to be interesting.<li>The people who do keep up with new music can never tell me how they do it; they all agree that you won't hear any interesting new music on the radio anymore.</ul>
Robin, my current future self is different from average in most of the ways that my past self expected it to be, especially those dimensions (such as having children, going to college) where others disagreed with my predictions.
If the young are not idealistic, then who will be? It is a very rare person who becomes more idealistic with age, although it is not unheard of, and, heck, we do need some idealism in this sorry world.
Robin, why do older people think the young should be idealistic then? That's mean - they should tell us why it's not important or useful. I guess perhaps because idealism is good in others, just not in self. They seem genuine though.
I think a lot of this losing idealism and becoming "jaded" is simply the result of dealing with the responsibilities that most of us face as we get older, especially when one has children. This forces one to focus on material wealth and sacrificing for the good of one's children, which is itself of course sort of idealistic, but what is involved often involves making all sorts of unpleasant compromises with hard and unpleasant realities in the world that one did not have to when one was an idealistic and unmarried and childless college student, thinking about changing the world for the better, and all that.
Whether it should bother you now that your preferences will change depends whether you currently think you have an aim for its own sake (so would prefer others to work on it too, including your future self) or you think your aim is to be happy, and your current preferences happen to forward that, as will your future preferences presumably.
Interesting that so many here say 'actually I'm different, I don't do this'. Seems better explained by 'nobody believes this' than by us being different. If my memory is right then when I was a child in some ways I expected to become a lot more like 20 year olds I saw than I am, in some ways I expected to keep traits that I have lost. I could choose either of these to think about after reading this, but I'm drawn to think about the one that makes me seem different to the people in the study.
With some things there seem to be confusing influences - e.g. while older people tend to be less idealistic, they generally encourage idealism in the young. They also say they became 'jaded'. As the young, this makes me think they misunderstood what they were in for to begin with, rather than that they received important info that I don't have, or their preferences changed. Being 'jaded' suggests originally believing that succeeding in idealistic aims would be easy or certain at all. Otherwise why would failing a lot matter? I think I expect a lot of failing and I still want to be idealistic, so I figure I should be harder to jade. But there are loads of ex-idealists out there to suggest to me that I won't last the decade. What should I think?
@Infotropism: I'm going to be [even more] brief here because our discussion has ranged far from Robin's topic and I don't want to be a rude guest. Feel free to email me if you wish to continue.
My point was that perceived values, and thus "good" and "right" are entirely subjective, but that doesn't mean they're arbitrary -- far from it.
I recognize that you are highly concerned with personal survival (however you may conceive it.) My point -- which is often hotly contested by those who have just gotten their head above the dismal popular norm on such matters and are lingering to enjoy the much improved view -- is that the desire for longevity, like the desire for pleasure, are pretty large branches but hardly the trunk of the complex hierarchical fog-enshrouded tree of values, rooted (we must assume) in The Way Things Are.
As for why you would not necessarily "always remain faithful to some core values", this was pointed at pretty strongly by Robin, and it has a lot to do with the entropic of arrow of context always increasing, and it may help to remember the admonition of Cosmides and Tooby that individual organisms are adaptation-executers, not fitness maximizers.
now I'm not sure how "imagination vs. observation" is supposed to be different from inside vs. outside at all.
So much the worse for inside/outside, if it simply relabels a more familiar distinction. Anyway, I've been dissatisfied with inside/outside for two years, because it seems to be a not all that well worked out idea which has been given a label too hastily and thus given the appearance of a worked out idea, and I doubt a comments exchange will really resolve my problems with it.
That it is tautological is almost certainly in part why I feel distressed by that idea. If what is good can be defined as good tautologically, then anything can be good. That may be true for minds-in general, to each its own, but not for a particular being. That's the way that leads to orgasmium or an equivalently dull state, as universal attractors, to any sentience that would think like that.
Values may change in subtle ways, but some changes aren't subtle. Allowing your death to happen, or another similarly big change, will simply destroy you, and that changes what you are, pretty thoroughly so.
To further elaborate on that, and about agents and entities, no matter how anyone, others or myself, may perceive who I am as an entity, it remains that what I am, practically, is my agency, at any particular point. That is what is interacting with my environment and modifying it, enabling or preventing some future to happen, steering that future into some particular state. Probably, to a state that I would value, using the values I hold dear at that point, and to the extent my abilities can make it happen of course.
You could partition "agents" in two broad categories. Those that care enough about preserving themselves, and thus their goals and values, and those that don't. What of the first ? If I am that agency now, and if I can foresee and plan my future to some extent, why wouldn't I try to make it so that any agency attached to my entity thereafter would always remain faithful to some core values the first agency that was to plan so, did hold dear ?
Constant: My point was, I see self-observation as an outside view because it's a pure statistical generalization, ignoring any situational details beyond what reference class (which past personal experiences) to look at. (I probably shouldn't have quoted the planning-specific bit.) In fact, now I'm not sure how "imagination vs. observation" is supposed to be different from inside vs. outside at all.
The paragraph you quote does describe a difference in detail that is narrowly about the event, rather than others' reactions.
Tyler is so old, he trips over his beard on the way to lunch.
Because all those people are different, obviously.
By which I mean people in the same peer group who made similar choices nevertheless had wildly different outcomes. Some people that marry are eternal Honeymooners, others went through infidelity and humiliating divorce. On what basis do you decide which one will happen to you?
Also I don't see why the younger colleague should accept he'll be like the older people who don't have evolving music tastes, when there are plenty of older people that do have such tastes*. Whose experiences should he accept?
* Isn't Tyler Cowen an older culture maven?
Yet all around them are other folks who are old, married, etc. - why not just accept those experiences as a good predictions of such futures?
Because all those people are different, obviously.
Women made more accurate predictions about how much they would enjoy a date with a man when they knew how much another woman in their social network enjoyed dating the man than when they read the man’s personal profile and saw his photograph.
This is actually just an example of "mate choice copying".
I'd like to have a way of measuring whether the fact that I don't keep up with new music is a sign of getting old.
I don't keep up with new music; but it's also true that<ul><li>I don't dislike new music; I don't even hear it as being significantly different from the music I heard in college. Unlike my parents, who found new music different and distasteful, I find it not different enough to be interesting.<li>The people who do keep up with new music can never tell me how they do it; they all agree that you won't hear any interesting new music on the radio anymore.</ul>
Robin, my current future self is different from average in most of the ways that my past self expected it to be, especially those dimensions (such as having children, going to college) where others disagreed with my predictions.
Katja,
If the young are not idealistic, then who will be? It is a very rare person who becomes more idealistic with age, although it is not unheard of, and, heck, we do need some idealism in this sorry world.
Robin, why do older people think the young should be idealistic then? That's mean - they should tell us why it's not important or useful. I guess perhaps because idealism is good in others, just not in self. They seem genuine though.
Eliezer, what works when you do it?
Katja, one could also realize that idealistic aims are less important or useful than one had thought.
I think a lot of this losing idealism and becoming "jaded" is simply the result of dealing with the responsibilities that most of us face as we get older, especially when one has children. This forces one to focus on material wealth and sacrificing for the good of one's children, which is itself of course sort of idealistic, but what is involved often involves making all sorts of unpleasant compromises with hard and unpleasant realities in the world that one did not have to when one was an idealistic and unmarried and childless college student, thinking about changing the world for the better, and all that.
Whether it should bother you now that your preferences will change depends whether you currently think you have an aim for its own sake (so would prefer others to work on it too, including your future self) or you think your aim is to be happy, and your current preferences happen to forward that, as will your future preferences presumably.
Interesting that so many here say 'actually I'm different, I don't do this'. Seems better explained by 'nobody believes this' than by us being different. If my memory is right then when I was a child in some ways I expected to become a lot more like 20 year olds I saw than I am, in some ways I expected to keep traits that I have lost. I could choose either of these to think about after reading this, but I'm drawn to think about the one that makes me seem different to the people in the study.
With some things there seem to be confusing influences - e.g. while older people tend to be less idealistic, they generally encourage idealism in the young. They also say they became 'jaded'. As the young, this makes me think they misunderstood what they were in for to begin with, rather than that they received important info that I don't have, or their preferences changed. Being 'jaded' suggests originally believing that succeeding in idealistic aims would be easy or certain at all. Otherwise why would failing a lot matter? I think I expect a lot of failing and I still want to be idealistic, so I figure I should be harder to jade. But there are loads of ex-idealists out there to suggest to me that I won't last the decade. What should I think?
@Infotropism: I'm going to be [even more] brief here because our discussion has ranged far from Robin's topic and I don't want to be a rude guest. Feel free to email me if you wish to continue.
My point was that perceived values, and thus "good" and "right" are entirely subjective, but that doesn't mean they're arbitrary -- far from it.
I recognize that you are highly concerned with personal survival (however you may conceive it.) My point -- which is often hotly contested by those who have just gotten their head above the dismal popular norm on such matters and are lingering to enjoy the much improved view -- is that the desire for longevity, like the desire for pleasure, are pretty large branches but hardly the trunk of the complex hierarchical fog-enshrouded tree of values, rooted (we must assume) in The Way Things Are.
As for why you would not necessarily "always remain faithful to some core values", this was pointed at pretty strongly by Robin, and it has a lot to do with the entropic of arrow of context always increasing, and it may help to remember the admonition of Cosmides and Tooby that individual organisms are adaptation-executers, not fitness maximizers.
now I'm not sure how "imagination vs. observation" is supposed to be different from inside vs. outside at all.
So much the worse for inside/outside, if it simply relabels a more familiar distinction. Anyway, I've been dissatisfied with inside/outside for two years, because it seems to be a not all that well worked out idea which has been given a label too hastily and thus given the appearance of a worked out idea, and I doubt a comments exchange will really resolve my problems with it.
That it is tautological is almost certainly in part why I feel distressed by that idea. If what is good can be defined as good tautologically, then anything can be good. That may be true for minds-in general, to each its own, but not for a particular being. That's the way that leads to orgasmium or an equivalently dull state, as universal attractors, to any sentience that would think like that.
Values may change in subtle ways, but some changes aren't subtle. Allowing your death to happen, or another similarly big change, will simply destroy you, and that changes what you are, pretty thoroughly so.
To further elaborate on that, and about agents and entities, no matter how anyone, others or myself, may perceive who I am as an entity, it remains that what I am, practically, is my agency, at any particular point. That is what is interacting with my environment and modifying it, enabling or preventing some future to happen, steering that future into some particular state. Probably, to a state that I would value, using the values I hold dear at that point, and to the extent my abilities can make it happen of course.
You could partition "agents" in two broad categories. Those that care enough about preserving themselves, and thus their goals and values, and those that don't. What of the first ? If I am that agency now, and if I can foresee and plan my future to some extent, why wouldn't I try to make it so that any agency attached to my entity thereafter would always remain faithful to some core values the first agency that was to plan so, did hold dear ?
And then there is the syndrome of starting to like music that one's parents liked that one thought was just so out of it when one was younger...
Constant: My point was, I see self-observation as an outside view because it's a pure statistical generalization, ignoring any situational details beyond what reference class (which past personal experiences) to look at. (I probably shouldn't have quoted the planning-specific bit.) In fact, now I'm not sure how "imagination vs. observation" is supposed to be different from inside vs. outside at all.
The paragraph you quote does describe a difference in detail that is narrowly about the event, rather than others' reactions.
It works when I do it.