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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Wouldn't all this be clearer if instead of talking about what you (want to)^n want, you tried to talk about the various programs that are running, each of which has a simpler directive? Most of the conflicts involving "wants that I don't want to want" seem to come from different low-level software conflicting with each other and with the higher-level software that's trying to mediate the process, sort of like System 2 tries to mediate System 1 to overcome bias.

Not claiming the *answers* are clear at all, but this seems a more straightforward, closer-to-what's-actually-going-on way to talk about the issues. "Want to want to want to..." is poetic but each of those "wants" has a different meaning and there's a massive parsing problem. Plus reminiscent of those awful "I Want You to Want Me" type song lyrics.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

This is perhaps the best post yet on this blog. Or at least it's my favorite since "Against Disclaimers."

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