What Do I Want?

It is relatively easy to identify a list of things that we want, in the sense of preferring a life with more of them to less of them. For example, we want time, income, health, insight, happiness, meaning, power, respect, connection, descendants, abilities, and accomplishments, both for ourselves and for our associates. But these things tend to be correlated with and to cause each other. So which of these things is what we really want?

It seems that evolution, via our DNA and cultural heritage, mostly just gave us many inclinations to grab more of these in many diverse situations, with only limited guidance on what do when they conflict. So to decide which are our deeper desires, we must think hard about how we’d make such choices, and must consider many such choices to get very far.

One of the key habits that evolution gave us is to lean into the choices that seem to go well for us. So by the time a person is my age (65), they’ve collected some pretty consistent and specialized habits of activity. From which they can more easily infer what they have come to want.

For a long time my main activity has been to try to gain and explain original insight into important neglected questions. Yes, I also like to eat, sleep, socialize, watch movies, etc. but I have to do at least some of that, and they seem at best minor contributions. So then the key question becomes: why do I want such insight?

I could try to claim that I had the most socially approved possible motive for this, namely to altruistically help folks today and their future descendants via my insights. But while altruistic help does add to my motives, it isn’t plausibly my main one. I’m nearly as motivated to gain insight on topics that promise far less altruistic help.

I feel I’d be substantially less motivated if I thought no one would ever remember or appreciate my insights. Those who applaud me don’t have to exist today, but I want them to eventually exist. But I also feel I wouldn’t be very motivated to be appreciated for insights that I myself didn’t much respect. So it seems I want the package of applause for insights that I think actually deserve applause.

I’ll thus summarize the main thing I want as glorious insight. I want to find and spread insights that I see as objectively worthy of admiration and praise, and I also want that admiration and praise to actually happen, at least someday. Insights are more glorious when they are elegant, deep, make a bigger difference to lives and other insights, and were hard to gain and explain.

Also, the level of admiration of a particular person who contributed to an insight should be adjusted for their resources and constraints. It is more impressive to do something hard, with fewer resources, when many forces oppose your efforts.

So, what do you want?