Natural selection singlemindedly optimized humans for only one single simple thing, in the 'outer optimization target':  Inclusive genetic fitness.

But its optimization method was via accidental mutation producing many random tweaks, and selection keeping only the few tweaks that improved inclusive genetic fitness.

And when that kind of optimization produces entities that do their own optimizing, like humans, using that kind of hill-climbing method that moves slowly and in many directions through the search space - rather than analytically designing a solution - it doesn't reproduce the single simple constant 'outer optimization target' inside the 'inner optimizer' of mortals.

Like, at all.

Some humans explicitly want kids, and not just sex, is about as close as natural selection got.  Pretty few humans explicitly want to maximize the number of copies of their DNA in the next generation.  Keltham himself was a lot closer to having a goal like that than most dath ilani, and it really wasn't about the DNA, for him, it was about making a point.  Keltham definitely doesn't want relative inclusive genetic fitness; if he had two brothers, he wouldn't have been just as happy with each of those brothers having 144 kids, even though that's the same amount of total genetic-relatedness passed down.

So what do the 'inner optimizers' end up wanting, in a hill-climbing 'outer optimization loop' like that?

They end up wanting 42 major things and 314 minor things (on the current count of what's known and thought to be distinct in the way of adaptation) that correlated with having more kids - or with your relatives having more kids - across the range of varying situations and environments where the 'outer optimization loop' was optimizing.

Keltham doesn't have them all memorized.

But, for example, people generally want to eat food, especially if they haven't eaten food in a while.  Potential ancestors who didn't want to eat any food starved to death and failed to become actual ancestors.

People like green fields, blossoming flowers, the sound of running water in the distance, because people who gravitated to fertile places like that had more kids, in the ancestral environment.  Keltham isn't one of the people who have a strong need for that sort of thing - he's fine in this Fortress for a while yet - but if it starts to bother him at some point, he will have to employ Interior Decorating Principles that try to create interior environments that satisfy the same instincts.

Mothers love their children - as do fathers, if they get the kinds of cues that the ancestral environment would have delivered, about the kid being theirs, which dath ilan is correspondingly very careful to deliver.  You'd expect that to correlate with having more surviving kids who made grandkids, in the ancestral environment.  Mothers who casually tossed their babies aside did not become ancestors.

People who have brothers and sisters usually care about those; they share half your genes on average.  There's a joke about how you shouldn't sacrifice your life to save your brother or sister's life, but you should sacrifice your life to save 2 siblings or 8 cousins.  It's funny because, of course, human beings don't care at all about their inclusive genetic fitness once they learn that such a thing exists.  They're not aligned to that which created them.  Like, you can imagine some creator smarter than natural selection devising an analytic solution for things that actually pursued a particular goal, but if you look around at yourself and you're not that, you're not.  As humans evaluate shouldness, there's no reason a human should be aligned to their creator, natural selection.  There isn't any principle of Law saying that things created will end up aligned to their creators.

Keltham's lessons sure did emphasize that point a lot!  He's guessing it's because there's some silly thing kids might otherwise do, where they imagine that inclusive genetic fitness is the 'correct' or 'intended' goal behind all of the things that they actually want.  Like, they start incorrectly thinking that they're supposed to calculate how much reproductive fitness they'll get out of food, instead of correctly understanding that they want the food because it's tasty and that's all there is to their own utilityfunction.  So it's important to understand that there's just no reason to think like that!

Natural selection singlemindedly optimized humans for only one single simple thing, in the 'outer optimization target':  Inclusive genetic fitness.

But its optimization method was via accidental mutation producing many random tweaks, and selection keeping only the few tweaks that improved inclusive genetic fitness.

And when that kind of optimization produces entities that do their own optimizing, like humans, using that kind of hill-climbing method that moves slowly and in many directions through the search space - rather than analytically designing a solution - it doesn't reproduce the single simple constant 'outer optimization target' inside the 'inner optimizer' of mortals.

Like, at all.

Some humans explicitly want kids, and not just sex, is about as close as natural selection got.  Pretty few humans explicitly want to maximize the number of copies of their DNA in the next generation.  Keltham himself was a lot closer to having a goal like that than most dath ilani, and it really wasn't about the DNA, for him, it was about making a point.  Keltham definitely doesn't want relative inclusive genetic fitness; if he had two brothers, he wouldn't have been just as happy with each of those brothers having 144 kids, even though that's the same amount of total genetic-relatedness passed down.

So what do the 'inner optimizers' end up wanting, in a hill-climbing 'outer optimization loop' like that?

They end up wanting 42 major things and 314 minor things (on the current count of what's known and thought to be distinct in the way of adaptation) that correlated with having more kids - or with your relatives having more kids - across the range of varying situations and environments where the 'outer optimization loop' was optimizing.

Keltham doesn't have them all memorized.

But, for example, people generally want to eat food, especially if they haven't eaten food in a while.  Potential ancestors who didn't want to eat any food starved to death and failed to become actual ancestors.

People like green fields, blossoming flowers, the sound of running water in the distance, because people who gravitated to fertile places like that had more kids, in the ancestral environment.  Keltham isn't one of the people who have a strong need for that sort of thing - he's fine in this Fortress for a while yet - but if it starts to bother him at some point, he will have to employ Interior Decorating Principles that try to create interior environments that satisfy the same instincts.

Mothers love their children - as do fathers, if they get the kinds of cues that the ancestral environment would have delivered, about the kid being theirs, which dath ilan is correspondingly very careful to deliver.  You'd expect that to correlate with having more surviving kids who made grandkids, in the ancestral environment.  Mothers who casually tossed their babies aside did not become ancestors.

People who have brothers and sisters usually care about those; they share half your genes on average.  There's a joke about how you shouldn't sacrifice your life to save your brother or sister's life, but you should sacrifice your life to save 2 siblings or 8 cousins.  It's funny because, of course, human beings don't care at all about their inclusive genetic fitness once they learn that such a thing exists.  They're not aligned to that which created them.  Like, you can imagine some creator smarter than natural selection devising an analytic solution for things that actually pursued a particular goal, but if you look around at yourself and you're not that, you're not.  As humans evaluate shouldness, there's no reason a human should be aligned to their creator, natural selection.  There isn't any principle of Law saying that things created will end up aligned to their creators.

Keltham's lessons sure did emphasize that point a lot!  He's guessing it's because there's some silly thing kids might otherwise do, where they imagine that inclusive genetic fitness is the 'correct' or 'intended' goal behind all of the things that they actually want.  Like, they start incorrectly thinking that they're supposed to calculate how much reproductive fitness they'll get out of food, instead of correctly understanding that they want the food because it's tasty and that's all there is to their own utilityfunction.  If a mistake like that carried over to adulthood, people might start thinking that the objective point of loving their own children, was to spread their DNA, rather than to love their children, which is in fact the point if you're a human.  So it's important to understand that there's just no reason to think like that!

Natural selection singlemindedly optimized humans for only one single simple thing, in the 'outer optimization target':  Inclusive genetic fitness.

But its optimization method was via accidental mutation producing many random tweaks, and selection keeping only the few tweaks that improved inclusive genetic fitness.

And when that kind of optimization produces entities that do their own optimizing, like humans, using that kind of hill-climbing method that moves slowly and in many directions through the search space - rather than analytically designing a solution - it doesn't reproduce the single simple constant 'outer optimization target' inside the 'inner optimizer' of mortals.

Like, at all.

Some humans explicitly want kids, and not just sex, is about as close as natural selection got.  Pretty few humans explicitly want to maximize the number of copies of their DNA in the next generation.  Keltham himself was a lot closer to having a goal like that than most dath ilani, and it really wasn't about the DNA, for him, it was about making a point.  Keltham definitely doesn't want relative inclusive genetic fitness; if he had two brothers, he wouldn't have been just as happy with each of those brothers having 144 kids, even though that's the same amount of total genetic-relatedness passed down.

So what do the 'inner optimizers' end up wanting, in a hill-climbing 'outer optimization loop' like that?

They end up wanting 42 major things and 314 minor things (on the current count of what's known and thought to be distinct in the way of adaptation) that correlated with having more kids - or with your relatives having more kids - across the range of varying situations and environments where the 'outer optimization loop' was optimizing.

Keltham doesn't have them all memorized.

But, for example, people generally want to eat food, especially if they haven't eaten food in a while.  Potential ancestors who didn't want to eat any food starved to death and failed to become actual ancestors.

People like green fields, blossoming flowers, the sound of running water in the distance, because people who gravitated to fertile places like that had more kids, in the ancestral environment.  Keltham isn't one of the people who have a strong need for that sort of thing - he's fine in this Fortress for a while yet - but if it starts to bother him at some point, he will have to employ Interior Decorating Principles that try to create interior environments that satisfy the same instincts.

Mothers love their children - as do fathers, if they get the kinds of cues that the ancestral environment would have delivered, about the kid being theirs, which dath ilan is correspondingly very careful to deliver.  You'd expect that to correlate with having more surviving kids who made grandkids, in the ancestral environment.  Mothers who casually tossed their babies aside did not become ancestors.

People who have brothers and sisters usually care about those; they share half your genes on average.  There's a joke about how you shouldn't sacrifice your life to save your brother or sister's life, but you should sacrifice your life to save 2 siblings or 8 cousins.  It's funny because, of course, human beings don't care at all about their inclusive genetic fitness once they learn that such a thing exists.  They're not aligned to that which created them.  Like, you can imagine some creator smarter than natural selection devising an analytic solution for things that actually pursued a particular goal, but if you look around at yourself and you're not that, you're not.  As humans evaluate shouldness, there's no reason a human should be aligned to their creator, natural selection.  There isn't any principle of Law saying that things created will end up aligned to their creators.

Keltham's lessons sure did emphasize that point a lot!  He's guessing it's because there's some silly thing kids might otherwise do, where they imagine that inclusive genetic fitness is the 'correct' or 'intended' goal behind all of the things that they actually want.  Like, they start incorrectly thinking that they're supposed to calculate how much reproductive fitness they'll get out of food, instead of correctly understanding that they want the food because it's tasty and that's all there is to their own utilityfunction.  If a mistake like that carried over to adulthood, people might start thinking that the objective point of loving their own children, was to spread their DNA, rather than to love their children, which is in fact the point if you're a human.  So it's important to understand that there's just no reason to think like that!