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Are people the best judges of their own interests?

ronburgundy said:
fromderinside said:
When one changes the basis for analysis as you did from basis for surviving to basis for having a good life, I argue you are changing the the discussion from science to social history or, ugh, philosophy.
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I didn't change anything, you did. The OP is referring to "interests" that relate to all of human desires and goals, which go way beyond the extremely narrow notion of an interest in mere survival. Pretending that the science of biological survival has anything meaningful to say about the realities of human interests more broadly is both bad science and bad philosophy.

In the modern world, survival and procreation are as easy as falling down the stairs. People have to go out their way to try to kill themselves in order to not survive, and the people who have the least knowledge and skills they would need to survive on their own are the ones "thriving" the most in terms of reproducing. Thus, what it takes to survive has almost no relevance to what most humans do today or why they do it, or how good they are at ensuring that what they do optimizes the emotional states that most motivate them to continue surviving as a mere means to the end of living a life they enjoy.
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Obviously we disagree on the boundary between science and philosophy/folk psychology. I say folk psychology because there is no overriding theory of behavior. This is where I mark my territory. There is a working theory of evolution to which there are several social theories including one for man which currently includes desire theory which arouse out of needs theory which arose out of approach withdrawal theory and has become an organizing mechanism for brain research. All of this will be replace in turn by more complete generalizations of the underpinnings of social or operating behavior where all those links to brain, neuron, and gene, will be reassigned

If we are talking science we are not talking about goals like going out of one's way to kill oneself as a basis for anything. We are, on the other hand, participants in on ongoing experiment concerning the continuance of life which we have pretty well founded operational metrics.

Operationally defined metrics based on more fundamental metrics are a building block of any scientific theory science all science is actually physics. With this clearly in mind please reconsider the relation between evolution and desire. So given this is a scientific and not a philosophical/folk psychologic thread I feel I'm on firm ground interpreting what I spent my life on participating in, behavioral science from the perspective of science.

The framework having been laid I feel perfectly adequate in taking my view of the relation between one's personal life and that of the operators in life through such as game theory from expectations arising from applying various fitness hypotheses thank you very much.

Seems to me you could benefit by going from initial conditions according to developed theory to observed consequences rather than inventing goals to explain the data you read.

Yes I can go through the evolution of approach and withdrawal among sexual-social species to current data since I have a fairly complete catalog (about 55 years) upon which to evaluate latest 'finding'. Based on that foundation I'm pretty confident that desires and goals are to be left to the burn bins of our understanding of human social behavior.
 
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bigfield said:
EricK said:
On a side note, when people say that others vote against their own interests, it seems to me that they mean they are voting against their own financial interests.
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No, it's not limited to financial interests. For example, people will sacrifice personal liberty for the sake of security theatre.
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The problem is that while most people know what they want to achieve, few know how to achieve it.

Any system that you don't understand is indistinguishable from magic; so poorly educated people (and in a highly technical and specialised society, that's a lot of people, because you needn't have any grasp of politics to be an excellent software engineer) treat solutions as though they were exactly that.

I want to be wealthy, to have my healthcare needs met, and to be safe from those who would harm me. Solving the issues that stand between me and these goals will need a magician. I don't know how the magic works, so I pick the best showman, or the person who says he will do it for the least money.

Some boring civil servant type going on about 'have to raise taxes to buy bigger magic wands' or some shit is not getting my vote. I'm going with the razzle-dazzle of The Stupendous Cheeto!
 
Nothing is more peculiar than the way in which people's opinions differ according to the way they were brought up. To me, people seem to be endlessly manipulable, and it is obvious that those in power manipulate them, having excellent financial and other reasons to do so. Pretty well everything I've ever experienced has borne this out. Can someone please suggest to me any evidence that I'm wrong?
 
iolo said:
Don2 (Don1 Revised) said:
Who best to judge? How about well-established, morally inclined scientists?
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Who establishes whether they are morally inclined, and whether those who financed their early research didn't buy them?
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It's probably best to have the people who bought them establish that. That way, we can help ensure they maximize the return on their investment.
 
iolo said:
Nothing is more peculiar than the way in which people's opinions differ according to the way they were brought up. To me, people seem to be endlessly manipulable, and it is obvious that those in power manipulate them, having excellent financial and other reasons to do so. Pretty well everything I've ever experienced has borne this out. Can someone please suggest to me any evidence that I'm wrong?
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You only think that people are easily manipulated because you were brought up to think that.
 
It is well known amongst psychologists that people are excellent at identifying and appeasing their immediate desires / interests. Our Id is highly active and a major driver for how we behave.. in the short term.

As for long term goals, planning for the future, and taking immediate losses to achieve longer term gains, people are HORRIBLE at it. If you can't see it hurting you, then it simply isn't there. If it doesn't help you NOW, then it is useless.

Why do people smoke? Why is fast food so popular? Why do so few people (relatively) have the proper insurance, financial investments, and good health habits?

Because we suck at seeing long term gains as valuable. We live in the "now", for the most part.
 
Averaged out, people are incredibly ignorant of how the world actually works. This is because for most people hovering around the poverty line there is no immediate imperative to understand things with only vague effects on survival, what people need is money, food, security. Once that security is achieved people reach actualization and can begin spending energy exploring their environment for esoteric things like culture, books, politics.

So if you want to know why most of the globe is the wild west, it's because the brunt of humans today are living in poverty.
 
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