Pondering human evolutionary dynamics, I wondered what people want to pass on to their future. So I collected 32 options and did 24 polls asking “what do you most try to promote/grow with your actions”. From 2932
"what do you most try to promote/grow with your actions" ... I'm not even sure what that means, I feel I'm missing something in the wording of it and I can't imagine I'm the only one. Like when I read that I think "nothing" and most people I know and have met likewise would say "nothing" I believe. Most of us are just trying to live our lives, we aren't trying to promote or grow anything.
A key question now to ask is what are your demographics? Are they all based in western societies? Age, Gender, socio-economics, only use substack/ X (formerly Twitter) or do they use other social media.
I mean, it's a good sociological question to ask don't get me wrong, and it's a good insight into the people who follow you, but without proper methodology it's no where near as practical an answer as you might think as it doesn't actually reflect the population at large.
Do you really think people have a significant difference between their deep values and their intellectual opinion? This is like asking someone their favorite color and trying to pass it off as data.
> Note: you have to go pretty far down this list to get to items with a plausible story for how promoting them could have much long term impact.
What?
You don't think promoting a person's deep values, intellectual ideas, or moral norms could plausibly have much long term impact?
I mean, for most people, nothing they do will have much long term impact (that they have control over). It's not even predictable what effect propagating their DNA will have on the future, as segments of it will be mixed and matched and discarded over the generations. There's no telling what kind of people your great-grandchildren will be, or whether you'd want more or less of that kind of person if you had the knowledge and choice. They probably won't be much like you.
But for the big thinkers of history, their deep values, intellectual ideas, and moral norms have had some of the most lasting impacts on the world, crossing genetic and national boundaries. Aristotle, Confucius, Buddha, Richard Bacon, James Watt, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Einstein. For a modern example the ideological legacy of Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman will likely stick with us for a good long time, as their work is deeply entrenched at the bottom of the tech stack. Heck, the legacy of the guy who designed QWERTY will probably be with us as long as humans have a reason to type.
How can you be sure it’s only their progeny and DNA they care about, as it is the fact that on most of the other things they might care about their impact is limited or near zero?
Sorry, I can't find the explanation how the lognormal fit allows to infer relative priorities and under which conditions. Can you link me to a source? I'm not confident that relative priorities can be infered for such a question and I want to check if the conditions hold in this case. I do agree that the method allows to determine the most important answer and also the ordering.
The lognormal fit is used for distributions over numerical ranges. The relative priority model says relative % responses to each 4-option choice are proportional to their relative priorities.
to what extant is this just an effect of it being really really hard to affect the future
I would say that it is very important to me that liberal democracy survives another 200 years but I find it very difficult to actually do something that would influence the political climate of 2224
Instead the best I can do is try to maintain the already existing liberal institutions such that they continue to survive and hopefully by induction if I can maintain liberal democracy for 1 year, future me could for another and so on ad infinitum
"what do you most try to promote/grow with your actions" ... I'm not even sure what that means, I feel I'm missing something in the wording of it and I can't imagine I'm the only one. Like when I read that I think "nothing" and most people I know and have met likewise would say "nothing" I believe. Most of us are just trying to live our lives, we aren't trying to promote or grow anything.
A key question now to ask is what are your demographics? Are they all based in western societies? Age, Gender, socio-economics, only use substack/ X (formerly Twitter) or do they use other social media.
I mean, it's a good sociological question to ask don't get me wrong, and it's a good insight into the people who follow you, but without proper methodology it's no where near as practical an answer as you might think as it doesn't actually reflect the population at large.
Do you really think people have a significant difference between their deep values and their intellectual opinion? This is like asking someone their favorite color and trying to pass it off as data.
I wanted to let people make the distinctions I thought many might want to make.
> Note: you have to go pretty far down this list to get to items with a plausible story for how promoting them could have much long term impact.
What?
You don't think promoting a person's deep values, intellectual ideas, or moral norms could plausibly have much long term impact?
I mean, for most people, nothing they do will have much long term impact (that they have control over). It's not even predictable what effect propagating their DNA will have on the future, as segments of it will be mixed and matched and discarded over the generations. There's no telling what kind of people your great-grandchildren will be, or whether you'd want more or less of that kind of person if you had the knowledge and choice. They probably won't be much like you.
But for the big thinkers of history, their deep values, intellectual ideas, and moral norms have had some of the most lasting impacts on the world, crossing genetic and national boundaries. Aristotle, Confucius, Buddha, Richard Bacon, James Watt, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Einstein. For a modern example the ideological legacy of Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman will likely stick with us for a good long time, as their work is deeply entrenched at the bottom of the tech stack. Heck, the legacy of the guy who designed QWERTY will probably be with us as long as humans have a reason to type.
I reworded that sentence to be clearer.
Did no one want to promote his race? Are none of your respondents racists?
They won't admit to it at least.
How can you be sure it’s only their progeny and DNA they care about, as it is the fact that on most of the other things they might care about their impact is limited or near zero?
Sorry, I can't find the explanation how the lognormal fit allows to infer relative priorities and under which conditions. Can you link me to a source? I'm not confident that relative priorities can be infered for such a question and I want to check if the conditions hold in this case. I do agree that the method allows to determine the most important answer and also the ordering.
The lognormal fit is used for distributions over numerical ranges. The relative priority model says relative % responses to each 4-option choice are proportional to their relative priorities.
to what extant is this just an effect of it being really really hard to affect the future
I would say that it is very important to me that liberal democracy survives another 200 years but I find it very difficult to actually do something that would influence the political climate of 2224
Instead the best I can do is try to maintain the already existing liberal institutions such that they continue to survive and hopefully by induction if I can maintain liberal democracy for 1 year, future me could for another and so on ad infinitum
Only 17% care about what happens to their kids/ grandkids after their death?!? Maybe I misunderstood the poll, but that seems shockingly low.
No the median respondent put 17% weight on that.
The option that I have to pass on TODAY is to be a good person .