A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “preferences”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott Alexander presents a partial defense of 'therapy culture', comparing its focus on self-discovery to helping people overcome a form of 'preference alexithymia'.
Scott examines 'critical windows' in human development, comparing them to AI learning processes and discussing their mysterious nature.
Scott Alexander examines why some people struggle to acknowledge others' preferences that deviate from social norms, drawing from personal experiences and psychological theories.
Scott explores how people's moral intuitions often conflict and can be reconciled through reflective equilibrium, using the example of inconsistent punishment judgments for theft by people of different socioeconomic classes.
Scott argues against negotiating with unconscious desires, distinguishing between behavior-executors (which have context-dependent urges) and utility-maximizers (which have stable preferences), and suggests we mistakenly model ourselves as the latter when we're actually the former.