Thank you for your work on this topic, I much appreciate reading it as I have been reflecting on these topics a lot myself.
A couple of reactions:
1. "Happiness should incentivise us to achieve our potential, the highest level of success we can reach."
-We cannot possibly know what our potential is (at least based on the implicit feature of latency that's embedded in the concept, perhaps you understand something else by potential). We can only know we can actually achieve once we have achieved it and at that point it stops becoming potential. We cannot know if we can achieve what we have not achieved yet. As a result potential is essentially a proxy for hopeful delusion. We may go towards it but it is always outside our reach.
My theory on this is that, given the above, the only reasonable epistemology is to think incrementally. In other words, there is no such thing as "highest" or "potential" but only "incremental improvement" (or aiming "higher" not "highest"). The markers that one sets to achieve and the effort that one puts in achieving those are context dependant as you say (I would say intrinsic values-dependant) and shift with time as the individual moves through life and conflicting priorities change.
2."It is because of these good feelings that we do not indulge in the pleasure of staying put and, instead, keep moving forward. Our psychology is designed to push us to achieve the best we can reach because our ancestors were more likely to be those who continuously strove for higher levels of success, rather than simply enjoying life."
-I would welcome more definitionally crisp terminology. For instance, what is the difference between "good feelings" and "pleasure" which appear to be opposites in the first sentence? This is important as then "good feelings" do a lot of work to push us to "strive for higher levels of success" while "pleasure of staying put" appear to be equivalent with "simply enjoying life" but somehow these pleasant (?) feelings are different than the "good feelings" that foster achievement.
My theory on this is that the "good feelings" are shaped by values/morality and meaning not by biological presets of "pleasure". There is a "I must do this because..." associated with the "good feelings" that cause striving which means that you get into implicit or explicit theories of reality that people have. The "pleasure" is succumbing to the immediate dopaminergic sensations of eating a burger and watching Netflix. The key question therefore is what are the intrinsic values that people hold that give us meaning and push us towards what to do next.
On your first point, we don't assume that the individual knows his/her potential. Rather, the individual can form beliefs about the probability distribution of this potential (e.g., by Bayesian updating). In many settings, this distribution can be closely concentrated around or just above the agent's current outcome, which aligns with your intuition. If you have tried your best for a while (e.g., running the same distance every week trying to beat your best time), you can only hope to improve incrementally. Our framework accommodates this intuition, as well as situations where you have less past experience and need to form new expectations about your likely achievement (e.g., when you are looking for your first job after graduating).
Regarding your second point, you correctly identified that it was not written in the best way. The full explanation is better described in our article cited in the post's introduction and in section 5.
My first point is that "potential" is definitionally an unknown.
As you say, one can form beliefs about it in specific non-complex domains where you optimise for time as one variable (like running and swimming) and you are in control of pretty much all the inputs in the optimisation (food, rest, time on the track etc). In that instance you can look at your historical best and also know what a professional athlete would achieve and also what's the world record as an upper bound. But that still does not tell you much about your potential. Perhaps if you run 10 hours a day and that's the only thing you do, you can become an Olympic champion. The more interesting question for me is should you run 10 hours a day to figure out if you have the potential of an Olympic champion? And that's a question of what one thinks is intrinsically valuable.
The analysis is even more difficult in complex domains (such as one's career) where you have to optimise for multiple variables sometimes in conflict (money, interesting and meaningful work, nice colleagues, travel or not etc). Figuring out what "potential" is in this maze is impossible unless you reduce it to a single variable (like money) & again, such reduction will depend on some rational on values. But even then there are many factors outside your control that drive the outcome. So, "your" potential is meaningless as its contingent on stuff that you don't control.
Should say that I worry about applying Bayes to complex domains where historical data is missing and/or that are subject to power law distributions. I also have a significant problem with the epistemology of Bayes reasoning in areas that one does not understand. Improved confidence based on faulty priors is a recipe for disaster. But that's a different discussion :)
Hi Lionel - I really enjoy your Substack.
I am halfway through a book titled “The Pursuit of Happiness” by Jeffrey Rosen (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Pursuit-of-Happiness/Jeffrey-Rosen/9781668002476). A good read with one of the key take outs being that how we define happiness has changed over the centuries. Might be worth a read once you’ve completed this series of posts.
And on an aside, as an avid cyclist one of the best things I have ever done is get off Strava. I started enjoying my cycling again!
Thanks a lot Dennis, very glad you like it! Thanks for the reference, I'll check it out.
I have done Strava too, it improve times, but it clearly reduces carefree riding.
Great read man! From r/statestarcodex
Thank you for your work on this topic, I much appreciate reading it as I have been reflecting on these topics a lot myself.
A couple of reactions:
1. "Happiness should incentivise us to achieve our potential, the highest level of success we can reach."
-We cannot possibly know what our potential is (at least based on the implicit feature of latency that's embedded in the concept, perhaps you understand something else by potential). We can only know we can actually achieve once we have achieved it and at that point it stops becoming potential. We cannot know if we can achieve what we have not achieved yet. As a result potential is essentially a proxy for hopeful delusion. We may go towards it but it is always outside our reach.
My theory on this is that, given the above, the only reasonable epistemology is to think incrementally. In other words, there is no such thing as "highest" or "potential" but only "incremental improvement" (or aiming "higher" not "highest"). The markers that one sets to achieve and the effort that one puts in achieving those are context dependant as you say (I would say intrinsic values-dependant) and shift with time as the individual moves through life and conflicting priorities change.
2."It is because of these good feelings that we do not indulge in the pleasure of staying put and, instead, keep moving forward. Our psychology is designed to push us to achieve the best we can reach because our ancestors were more likely to be those who continuously strove for higher levels of success, rather than simply enjoying life."
-I would welcome more definitionally crisp terminology. For instance, what is the difference between "good feelings" and "pleasure" which appear to be opposites in the first sentence? This is important as then "good feelings" do a lot of work to push us to "strive for higher levels of success" while "pleasure of staying put" appear to be equivalent with "simply enjoying life" but somehow these pleasant (?) feelings are different than the "good feelings" that foster achievement.
My theory on this is that the "good feelings" are shaped by values/morality and meaning not by biological presets of "pleasure". There is a "I must do this because..." associated with the "good feelings" that cause striving which means that you get into implicit or explicit theories of reality that people have. The "pleasure" is succumbing to the immediate dopaminergic sensations of eating a burger and watching Netflix. The key question therefore is what are the intrinsic values that people hold that give us meaning and push us towards what to do next.
Hi Cip,
On your first point, we don't assume that the individual knows his/her potential. Rather, the individual can form beliefs about the probability distribution of this potential (e.g., by Bayesian updating). In many settings, this distribution can be closely concentrated around or just above the agent's current outcome, which aligns with your intuition. If you have tried your best for a while (e.g., running the same distance every week trying to beat your best time), you can only hope to improve incrementally. Our framework accommodates this intuition, as well as situations where you have less past experience and need to form new expectations about your likely achievement (e.g., when you are looking for your first job after graduating).
Regarding your second point, you correctly identified that it was not written in the best way. The full explanation is better described in our article cited in the post's introduction and in section 5.
Thanks Lionel.
My first point is that "potential" is definitionally an unknown.
As you say, one can form beliefs about it in specific non-complex domains where you optimise for time as one variable (like running and swimming) and you are in control of pretty much all the inputs in the optimisation (food, rest, time on the track etc). In that instance you can look at your historical best and also know what a professional athlete would achieve and also what's the world record as an upper bound. But that still does not tell you much about your potential. Perhaps if you run 10 hours a day and that's the only thing you do, you can become an Olympic champion. The more interesting question for me is should you run 10 hours a day to figure out if you have the potential of an Olympic champion? And that's a question of what one thinks is intrinsically valuable.
The analysis is even more difficult in complex domains (such as one's career) where you have to optimise for multiple variables sometimes in conflict (money, interesting and meaningful work, nice colleagues, travel or not etc). Figuring out what "potential" is in this maze is impossible unless you reduce it to a single variable (like money) & again, such reduction will depend on some rational on values. But even then there are many factors outside your control that drive the outcome. So, "your" potential is meaningless as its contingent on stuff that you don't control.
Should say that I worry about applying Bayes to complex domains where historical data is missing and/or that are subject to power law distributions. I also have a significant problem with the epistemology of Bayes reasoning in areas that one does not understand. Improved confidence based on faulty priors is a recipe for disaster. But that's a different discussion :)