4 ms·

This maps to something I've noticed. There's a pattern where human beings are wired to enjoy things that are important for their survival and thriving, but tha

This maps to something I've noticed. There's a pattern where human beings are wired to enjoy things that are important for their survival and thriving, but that these instincts are easily hijacked for aimless gratification. Eating junk food (vs stuff that gives you health and energy) or whacking off to porn (instead of healthy relationships and procreation) are examples of this. Anyway "the need for cognition"... I noticed that there's a class of people who are objectively "smart" in the sense that they can solve hard puzzles, crush it at trivia, etc. But at the same time these folks haven't been able to / bothered to get into lucrative professions that leverage these smarts and actually have a sort of not great lives (eg: unhealthy weight, no partner, etc.) So they are sort of scratching their itch for cognition, but not in a way that makes their life better in an objective way (which is most likely the reason we have this drive)

mahathu 4y ago
> This maps to something I've noticed. > There's a pattern where human beings are wired to enjoy things that are important for their survival and thriving, but that these instincts are easily hijacked for aimless gratification. It's late and I'm tired so most likely I'm not understanding your point properly. Aren't those literally the most fundamental and nearly universally known (i.e. preached by popular science) results from (a) evolution and (b) neuroscience research, respectively?
- preordained 4y ago
  Not OP...but no, I think you way overstating how fundamental and well-known all this supposedly is, despite trending awareness
fasterik 4y ago
Lucrative professions have their own ways of hijacking the need for cognition. For example, programming can be an extremely rewarding activity when pursued for its own sake, but in the corporate world it is often reduced to tedium and drudgery. Financial reward isn't the only way to make someone's life objectively better. A sense of autonomy, freedom to explore and create, and high satisfaction with one's output are just as important, if not more so. Sometimes pursuing a lucrative career is at odds with these other goals.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  Yes sure, I agree with all that. I am talking about people who are super smart but whose lives aren't good (agree, I took a narrative shortcut by talking about the financial angle only - it's more than that)
alpaca128 4y ago
> So they are sort of scratching their itch for cognition, but not in a way that makes their life better in an objective way Maybe they wouldn't enjoy doing it professionally or don't care about "objectively" min-maxing their careers. Nothing wrong with that imho.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I over indexed on the "financial" part, I am talking about people who aren't living great lives in general despite being very smart. They are scratching their cognitive itch, but only in ways that doesn't do anything concrete for them (not just money.)
wruza 4y ago
Real life puzzles are barely purely logical and there’s a lot of competition and superiority that simply bs you over and uses other methods to undermine your effort. I solve mathdoku before bedtime for fun, but when it comes to “business” I usually want to take a board and smash these smiling snakefaces with it, because that is the most logical move. E.g. in chess they call it “simplification”. Unfortunately that’s illegal, so the best bet is to leave cognition at home. but not in a way that makes their life better in an objective way (which is most likely the reason we have this drive) Most of our features are essential for small groups of 10-100 humans. Individual successes are irrelevant for survival. A whole group wins (over another group) when one ape solves a puzzle and shares benefits.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Mathdoku is a fun way to flex the reasoning circuitry. But where cognition is needed in business it is knowing how to outsmart these snakefaces, how to think a few moves ahead of them, how to know the stuff that matters before they know it. Smashing these faces is no more logical than smashing a chessboard when the stupid stubborn pieces won't move the way you had anticipated. It is tantamount to admitting that cognition has not been successfully applied, or maybe even engaged. Look at artificially produced puzzles that tickle your cognition gland the same way you look at artificially produced snacks, optimized to tickle your taste buds and hijack your sense of "delicious", without providing anything nutritious. Look at real-world, gnarly, complicated, seemingly self-contradictory problems as you look at natural, raw produce, with its variety of nutrients, vitamins, fibers, etc, all tangled together, with a taste which may not be as refined as refined sugar, but which is really rich.
  - wruza 4y ago
    You’re right, this aggression and escapism reports to anxiety, which interferes with C. But personally I don’t find it worth to tolerate bad feelings (been there) or dig deeper for years (done that) only to own better things or to be at better places. Fine as it is.
    - 4y ago
Teever 4y ago
In some of his better known work, a then little known mathematician wrote about this sort of behaviour, the deep underlying societal causes, and proposed explosive solutions to the problem: " We use the term “surrogate activity” to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity." https://medium.com/chris-messina/surrogate-activities-the-power-process-16203dda87 https://medium.com/chris-messina/surrogate-activities-the-po...
- xyzelement 4y ago
  Lol! Thank you.
tripdout 4y ago
whacking off to porn (instead of healthy relationships and procreation) These two things are not mutually exclusive nor is there a correlation between them.
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  A simple search to scholar.google.com suggests otherwise. There are even aggregates like : https://ofloveandfriendship.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/the-debate-of-pornography/ https://ofloveandfriendship.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/the-deb... Of course it might go against your worldview or political views, so you might reject all arguments.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Linking to a sappy marriage and family studies student at Brigham Young University-Idaho the lens of Mormon Family Values is hardly objective. Sure, it's a valid view of the world, but a globally niche PoV.
    - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
      or you can ignore the site and focus on the actual contents which are references form journal publications ? I am certainly not a fan of Mormons, but that doesn't invalidate every single thing they have to say
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      I don't think "whacking off to porn is detrimental" is a solely Mormon perspective. That said, if you had to pick a group who can claim that they have figured out what it takes to have many children, Mormons are it, right?
      - defrost 4y ago
        [dead]
klik99 4y ago
I also think there are a lot of products that hijack the need for cognition, to make people feel like they're achieving something when they're really not - for example dense complicated games like Factorio/Satisfactory/Dwarf Fortress/Paradox games have all at one time completely taken over satisfying that cognitive need. While I see what you're getting at, I take issue with your main point here: > So they are sort of scratching their itch for cognition, but not in a way that makes their life better in an objective way (which is most likely the reason we have this drive) Evolutionarily, there is no such thing "the reason" why we have any drive. Rather over time certain characteristics are selected for by their fitness in the environment. That might seem like a semantic or not important distinction, except that this drive for cognition has effects way beyond the individual. The key thing is these people who go after what most would consider "unproductive" things, IE not using their smarts to go after lucrative professions, serve an important role in society to break out of local maxima and ultimately bring society to entirely new places. But this drive is obviously not a precise tool, it is just as likely to go towards some non-productive ends as productive (the cognitive equivalent of junk food or whacking off). Some people simply have a larger drive towards cognition than to social status, and that occasionally leads to changing the world. (Footnote: this is simplified - obviously evolution/selection happens on the individual level, but as a society we place value on intellectualism because of the outsized impact, which alters the environment to select for this drive - and people often reach their achievements later in life, so the "evolutionary success" of having kids is based on their potential for greatness, even if they never reach it. This way selection can favor drives that actually hurt most individuals with the drive, because the ones that change the world have such an outsized impact - this only works because humans are adaptable enough to alter their selection criteria based on the broader environment - think fat people used to be attractive when nobody had much food)

mahathu 4y ago

> This maps to something I've noticed. > There's a pattern where human beings are wired to enjoy things that are important for their survival and thriving, but that these instincts are easily hijacked for aimless gratification. It's late and I'm tired so most likely I'm not understanding your point properly. Aren't those literally the most fundamental and nearly universally known (i.e. preached by popular science) results from (a) evolution and (b) neuroscience research, respectively?

preordained 4y ago
Not OP...but no, I think you way overstating how fundamental and well-known all this supposedly is, despite trending awareness

fasterik 4y ago

Lucrative professions have their own ways of hijacking the need for cognition. For example, programming can be an extremely rewarding activity when pursued for its own sake, but in the corporate world it is often reduced to tedium and drudgery. Financial reward isn't the only way to make someone's life objectively better. A sense of autonomy, freedom to explore and create, and high satisfaction with one's output are just as important, if not more so. Sometimes pursuing a lucrative career is at odds with these other goals.

xyzelement 4y ago
Yes sure, I agree with all that. I am talking about people who are super smart but whose lives aren't good (agree, I took a narrative shortcut by talking about the financial angle only - it's more than that)

alpaca128 4y ago

> So they are sort of scratching their itch for cognition, but not in a way that makes their life better in an objective way Maybe they wouldn't enjoy doing it professionally or don't care about "objectively" min-maxing their careers. Nothing wrong with that imho.

xyzelement 4y ago
I over indexed on the "financial" part, I am talking about people who aren't living great lives in general despite being very smart. They are scratching their cognitive itch, but only in ways that doesn't do anything concrete for them (not just money.)

wruza 4y ago

Real life puzzles are barely purely logical and there’s a lot of competition and superiority that simply bs you over and uses other methods to undermine your effort. I solve mathdoku before bedtime for fun, but when it comes to “business” I usually want to take a board and smash these smiling snakefaces with it, because that is the most logical move. E.g. in chess they call it “simplification”. Unfortunately that’s illegal, so the best bet is to leave cognition at home. but not in a way that makes their life better in an objective way (which is most likely the reason we have this drive) Most of our features are essential for small groups of 10-100 humans. Individual successes are irrelevant for survival. A whole group wins (over another group) when one ape solves a puzzle and shares benefits.

nine_k 4y ago
Mathdoku is a fun way to flex the reasoning circuitry. But where cognition is needed in business it is knowing how to outsmart these snakefaces, how to think a few moves ahead of them, how to know the stuff that matters before they know it. Smashing these faces is no more logical than smashing a chessboard when the stupid stubborn pieces won't move the way you had anticipated. It is tantamount to admitting that cognition has not been successfully applied, or maybe even engaged. Look at artificially produced puzzles that tickle your cognition gland the same way you look at artificially produced snacks, optimized to tickle your taste buds and hijack your sense of "delicious", without providing anything nutritious. Look at real-world, gnarly, complicated, seemingly self-contradictory problems as you look at natural, raw produce, with its variety of nutrients, vitamins, fibers, etc, all tangled together, with a taste which may not be as refined as refined sugar, but which is really rich.
- wruza 4y ago
  You’re right, this aggression and escapism reports to anxiety, which interferes with C. But personally I don’t find it worth to tolerate bad feelings (been there) or dig deeper for years (done that) only to own better things or to be at better places. Fine as it is.
  - 4y ago

Teever 4y ago

In some of his better known work, a then little known mathematician wrote about this sort of behaviour, the deep underlying societal causes, and proposed explosive solutions to the problem: " We use the term “surrogate activity” to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity." https://medium.com/chris-messina/surrogate-activities-the-power-process-16203dda87 https://medium.com/chris-messina/surrogate-activities-the-po...

xyzelement 4y ago
Lol! Thank you.

tripdout 4y ago

whacking off to porn (instead of healthy relationships and procreation) These two things are not mutually exclusive nor is there a correlation between them.

4gotunameagain 4y ago
A simple search to scholar.google.com suggests otherwise. There are even aggregates like : https://ofloveandfriendship.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/the-debate-of-pornography/ https://ofloveandfriendship.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/the-deb... Of course it might go against your worldview or political views, so you might reject all arguments.
- defrost 4y ago
  Linking to a sappy marriage and family studies student at Brigham Young University-Idaho the lens of Mormon Family Values is hardly objective. Sure, it's a valid view of the world, but a globally niche PoV.
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    or you can ignore the site and focus on the actual contents which are references form journal publications ? I am certainly not a fan of Mormons, but that doesn't invalidate every single thing they have to say
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    I don't think "whacking off to porn is detrimental" is a solely Mormon perspective. That said, if you had to pick a group who can claim that they have figured out what it takes to have many children, Mormons are it, right?
    - defrost 4y ago
      [dead]

klik99 4y ago

I also think there are a lot of products that hijack the need for cognition, to make people feel like they're achieving something when they're really not - for example dense complicated games like Factorio/Satisfactory/Dwarf Fortress/Paradox games have all at one time completely taken over satisfying that cognitive need. While I see what you're getting at, I take issue with your main point here: > So they are sort of scratching their itch for cognition, but not in a way that makes their life better in an objective way (which is most likely the reason we have this drive) Evolutionarily, there is no such thing "the reason" why we have any drive. Rather over time certain characteristics are selected for by their fitness in the environment. That might seem like a semantic or not important distinction, except that this drive for cognition has effects way beyond the individual. The key thing is these people who go after what most would consider "unproductive" things, IE not using their smarts to go after lucrative professions, serve an important role in society to break out of local maxima and ultimately bring society to entirely new places. But this drive is obviously not a precise tool, it is just as likely to go towards some non-productive ends as productive (the cognitive equivalent of junk food or whacking off). Some people simply have a larger drive towards cognition than to social status, and that occasionally leads to changing the world. (Footnote: this is simplified - obviously evolution/selection happens on the individual level, but as a society we place value on intellectualism because of the outsized impact, which alters the environment to select for this drive - and people often reach their achievements later in life, so the "evolutionary success" of having kids is based on their potential for greatness, even if they never reach it. This way selection can favor drives that actually hurt most individuals with the drive, because the ones that change the world have such an outsized impact - this only works because humans are adaptable enough to alter their selection criteria based on the broader environment - think fat people used to be attractive when nobody had much food)