There’s an innate optimality to such apparent un-optimality.
\n\n", "content_hash": "sha256:c6c471265cdce80ac6a6ad0ef03e56ebc6f0a6df7f149dad3d76b01a73774d37", "media": [], "changelog": [ { "version": 1, "at": "2026-08-21T14:13:45Z", "note": null } ] }Our verbal, conversational systems are much better at abstract reasoning than are the motivational systems that pull our behavior. I have enough abstract reasoning ability to understand that I’m safe on the glass floor of a tall building, or that ice cream is not healthy, or that exercise furthers my goals... but this doesn’t lead to an automatic updating of the reward gradients that, absent rare and costly conscious overrides, pull my behavior. I can train my automatic systems, for example by visualizing ice cream as disgusting and artery-clogging and yucky, or by walking across the glass floor often enough to persuade my brain that I can’t fall through the floor... but systematically training one’s motivational systems in this way is also not automatic for us.