[HN Gopher] The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior
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The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior
Author : mizzao
Score : 196 points
Date : 2021-12-25 01:58 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.themarginalian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.themarginalian.org)
| whalesalad wrote:
| I've never really been able to accept Bertrand Russell. A lot of
| people evangelize his teachings but they feel so rudimentary and
| superficial.
|
| I relate much more to the teachings of Abraham Maslow, concepts
| around self-realization and self-actualization.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| IMO, Russell's idea here is reductionist and lacking a thorough
| examination of causality:
|
| >a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of
| fear with the desire for necessaries
|
| This quote barely and only begrudgingly touches on causality and
| only skirts with the idea that these "desires" are merely born
| out of dysfunction.
|
| I think that human behavior is much better explained by the NVC
| model of a complex matrix of human needs e.g.
| https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory and that
| all dysfunctional behavior stems from poor strategies for meeting
| those needs.
| js8 wrote:
| The four "desires" driving all human behavior are: noradrenaline,
| acetylcholine, serotonin and dopamine.
| petra wrote:
| Also oxytocin.
|
| How are those mapped to behaviours/desires?
| personalityson wrote:
| To love and to hate, two perfectly human desires
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jan/30/bright-
| id... https://time.com/49399/oxytocin-racism-study/
| everybodyknows wrote:
| I have a notion estrogen and testosterone deserve considering
| as well.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| And free Wi-Fi.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Those you mention are biological bits in bio logic gates.
|
| The desires FTA are more abstract
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Bits is a rather poot analogy. Response to a transmitter is
| not a 1:1 relationship of input:output. In reality, the
| relationship is one on a sliding scale depending on protein
| expression and post translational modifications
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| _" All human activity is prompted by desire."_
|
| This seems like a pretty inaccurate statement. He's explicitly
| saying that moral actions are also desire-driven, because if we
| didn't desire to do the thing, we wouldn't do it. But we know we
| don't wish to do the things we sometimes do, because we have
| internal conflict over it; if we wished to do it, it wouldn't be
| hard to make ourselves do it. Clearly we know the things we
| "wish" to do, because we do them quickly and freely without
| internal pain. Other things we "don't wish" to do, we do have
| internal pain over and do take more effort to make ourselves do.
| So Bertrand's word "desire" is really just a synonym for
| "motivation".
|
| If you said "All human activity is prompted by motivation," then
| that wouldn't work for human activity prompted by, say,
| heuristics. We now know that much of human beings' immediate
| actions are actually just an automatic response to pattern-
| matching algorithms in the brain. Those actions can't be driven
| by desire, because they're almost subconscious; it's not what we
| "wish for", it's what the body immediately responds to in order
| to keep itself alive in a dynamic and dangerous environment.
|
| Therefore, all human activity is _not_ prompted by desire, but by
| whatever kooky biological processes make up our brains and
| control our actions, voluntary or involuntary. But that 's not a
| very sexy quip for a talk :-)
| pnut wrote:
| Seems like he was stumbling towards the Four Noble Truths of
| Buddhism.
| sabellito wrote:
| Why did you choose this particular verb, "to stumble"? Came
| across as awfully arrogant, which doesn't match my basic
| understanding of Buddhism.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Can't speak for GP but stumbling through life and
| occasionally finding bits of wisdom seems to be the basic
| mode for all of us. That Russell would be different would
| imply he got perfect knowledge from somewhere.
| sabellito wrote:
| Ah perhaps my reading was unnecessarily negative.
| skinney6 wrote:
| It's funny we want others to tell us who we are rather then just
| examining our own selves. Try it. Diligently and thoroughly
| examine yourself as if you were a third person. Every thought,
| feeling and impulse. All of it. No need for shame, censorship or
| judgement. This is a private space. If a thought brings up and
| uncomfortable feeling or emotion. Don't turn away, examine that
| feeling. What makes it uncomfortable? Why don't I like this
| feeling? This has completely changed me. It has freed me from the
| tyrannical rule of uncomfortable feelings. I highly recommend it.
|
| Full disclosure, I'm all into self-realization now and the non-
| dual philosophy.
| tcgv wrote:
| As of recently I started examining myself as well, but only
| ocasionally. I will try to perform it in more depth, Thanks!
|
| To give my two cents, for a more effective experience I
| recommend getting to know the most common cognitive biases and
| trying to spot all of which we are subject to.
|
| It's indeed a mind opening experience :)
| number6 wrote:
| How do you do it?
| gumby wrote:
| ISTR Russell wrote of "four desires" (i.e. four of many) not "
| _the_ four desires" as the article asserts.
|
| In particular his life doesn't appear to have been focused on
| those four, though of course nobody is immune to them.
| empressplay wrote:
| Shallow and forgets compassion
| Supermancho wrote:
| From the article:
|
| Russell points to four such infinite desires -- acquisitiveness,
| rivalry, vanity, and love of power
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Love of power seems like a form of acquisitiveness to me.
| qnsi wrote:
| aren't all four just desire for status?
| scollet wrote:
| These are non-exclusive sets imo. I'm curious what you think
| about it and why you might form one on the other.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I would put the acquisitiveness thing as a form of any
| obsession - acquisition of money, books, lovers, things
| with the color red, to more abstract things - renown in the
| community, power... as with many things in human existence
| on a behavioral spectrum, some of these forms of
| acquisition would appear neurotic from the outsid ne
| (acquiring things with the color red for example) and some
| would easily meld into each other - money and power for
| example.
|
| The acquisition of possessions is probably one of the more
| commonly observed patterns of the behavior, probably
| because a socially accepted and even applauded behavior.
|
| Acquiring lots of lovers is for example somewhat frowned
| upon, so if you can move your love of acquisition from sex
| to money that's moving from being despised by the community
| to being respected.
| ludston wrote:
| 'Acquisitiveness' must be clearly defined as a category,
| given the colloquial definition of it being the "desire
| to get things" seems tautological. Otherwise Russel is
| failing to say anything more than, "humans are driven by
| four desires, one of which is the desire to have things".
|
| Although, I think it's somewhat absurd to have power and
| things as separate categories given that 'ownership' is a
| social construct where we agree that certain people get
| to have power over certain objects, and can thus exert
| power over anyone else that wishes to use them.
| hinkley wrote:
| And often vanity.
| irrational wrote:
| I've heard these referred to as the four Ps.
|
| Property - Acquisitiveness
|
| Pride - Rivalry
|
| Prominence - Vanity
|
| Power - Power
|
| I've also seen a list where these where exemplified by certain
| American cities.
|
| Property - NYC (financial district)
|
| Pride - this one was missing from the list I saw. Perhaps Chicago
| during the heyday of mafia/political corruption/competition?
|
| Prominence - Hollywood
|
| Power - Washington D.C.
| Paddywack wrote:
| I once heard a quote by Anthony Robbins that there are 6 human
| needs that drive all behaviours: 1) certainty, 2) variety, 3)
| significance, 4) love and connection, 5) growth and 6)
| contribution Interesting to match to the 4 desires...
| hulitu wrote:
| Growth is very important. There is also 7) greed.
| rixed wrote:
| I count myself as one of the many Russel fans, but I have to
| admit that if this article were my first encounter with his
| thoughts then my opinion on him would probably be very different.
|
| In this speech Russel loosely identifies 3 competing views
| regarding what constitutes the central motives behind human
| actions:
|
| - His own view, that he states upfront: All human activity is
| prompted by desire and men differ from each others and from
| animals mainly because they desire different things.
|
| - All human activity is governed by a sense of virtues (Russel
| focus on "sense of duty" but I think it's fairer to enlarge this
| class of arguments a bit). This is a major leitmotiv in
| conservative worldviews although Russel does not name it as such.
|
| - All human activity is governed by the material circumstances in
| which they live, mentioned rather "en passant", and the landmark
| of the other end of the spectrum as far as worldview is
| concerned, the one that cannot be named.
|
| Russel goes on by enumerating (some of?) those desires/motives:
| acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity and love of power.
|
| He gives some illustrations, many of which are funny but none
| convincing.
|
| His posits that the most important determinant of human behavior
| is how much one is sensible to each of those desires, yet he has
| to concede that human desires do not merely differs in intensity
| but also in quality, noting that, for instance, acquisitiveness
| can come in various shapes: accumulation of money for some, of
| potatoes for others. But then, one might ask, what causes some to
| seek gold rather than potatoes ? Russel's answer: it depends on
| the material circumstances that one was subjected to in
| childhood. Oh, but wait...
|
| All in all, I find this speech not only unconvincing but actually
| reactionary in the sense that it seems to ignore what we actually
| know about behaviors, desires and feelings (especially today, but
| maybe even in 1950). And we know actually a thing or two about
| behaviors of social apes, but that's not usually written in
| sociology books nor in psychology books nor in history books. One
| have to resort to evolutionary sciences or even better:
| primatology.
|
| Russel mentions observing apes in the zoo and recognizes that
| they can exhibit curiosity ("escape from boredom"). Youtube
| addicts might remember that viral video of a chimp entertaining
| himself by teasing a tiger. But that goes well beyond that:
| primatologists have indeed observed a range of motives in chimps
| that are familiar to us humans. But when its about chimps we
| don't tell ourselves stories about idealized motives: at the end
| of the day, it's all about mating partners, although the chimps
| themselves may believe in more sophisticated explanation.
|
| Desires and feelings, it turns out, might not be that unique. It
| is no longer believed that they originates from the human-only
| evolved cortex, but more likely from the brain stem, of ancient
| descent and thus commonplace in the animal kingdom. We don't know
| what it feels like to be a bat, except that in some way we do
| know: the bat experiences fear, hunger, sexual attraction, social
| competition, tiredness, curiosity... We have no idea what the
| world "feels like" for a bat, having different senses and
| different brainpower, but the desires and emotions we can
| recognize easily, because we share many of them.
|
| So if one is after what makes human actions distinct, one should
| probably look at something else than desires.
| rixed wrote:
| Also, the nail on the coffin for my unquestioning admiration
| for Russel could be the passage were he suggests that the human
| race survival might not be desirable. Was it just intended as a
| joke? Or was he in such a bad mood around that period?
| Misanthropy is so the opposite of Russel that I had to read the
| passage several times over.
| gverrilla wrote:
| "Philosophy"
| neatze wrote:
| This and similar categorizations, seems like they say virtually
| nothing, personally, I have different personality based on
| environmental context (warzone country passing checkpoint versus
| family dinner), fairly sure I am not the only one, furthermore
| environments context activates different set of "personalities"
| in each individual human, I don't think there can be derived
| useful average of sort, because humans adapt behaviors to
| environmental contexts to some degree, in addition to changing
| perception of context.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| a human being is a bio robot that is driven by a very complicated
| neural network that has the only 2 goals: 1) to survive 2) to
| reproduce itself.
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| Russell was an interesting character and I hadn't heard of this
| particular work by him.
|
| It's important to understand that Russell was also limited by his
| own particular personality and world view. He was a good example
| of an ENTP or "debater" personality type as was Feynman. So in
| writing that he was very much bound by those limitations of his
| own world view and I'm sure he found a lot of the behavior of his
| (most likely autistic colleage) confusing and most likely it
| didn't adhere to these "universal desires".
|
| This isn't totally related but I love this essay by Zapfe and I
| think that these 4 coping mechanisms he mentions in the article
| are a lot more "universal" (isolation, anchoring, distracting,
| and sublimation):
| https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah
|
| We're all bound by our own world view of things and certainly
| Russell was as well. It might have been self selecting that the
| type of people he spent time with in that era were also very
| concerned with those things but I'd be really curious if he ever
| had this conversation about these "universals" with Wittgenstein
| because I feel like Wittgenstein would really disagree, and
| Russell would just keep trying to label autistic traits as forms
| of these when that's not a good characterization at all.
| sabellito wrote:
| Given the long list of well-knwown scientific criticism towards
| MBTI, how can you categorically say things like: "He was a good
| example of an ENTP or 'debater'", and then derive such decisive
| conclusions from it: "he was very much bound by those
| limitations"?
| pookeh wrote:
| You posed your question assuming he agrees with "scientific
| criticism towards MBTI".
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| I do agree with the scientific criticism towards MBTI. But
| I never claimed to be using it that way. It's possible to
| find value for yourself or use in things personally that
| aren't rooted in scientific trials or rigor and it's
| possible for one to engage with these things and be well
| aware of that fact. It's black and white thinking to assume
| that "X is into MBTI/tarot/etc, therefore they are not a
| scientifically minded individual". We can apply dialectical
| thinking to this, and challenge yourself and wonder if
| there can exist someone who is using these non science
| based things while at the same time is fully aware of the
| fact that they're not science based. Maybe it's more rare
| because many people try to prop themselves up and defend
| whatever they're interested in due to ego issues but that's
| not the case here. Do I personally see value in religion,
| and is religion science based? No on both of these counts.
| But there are people who derive personal value from their
| faith and that's not something I can argue with. Now when
| people double down and try to claim that X is real and
| actually happened and this and that, that's a problem, but
| there do exist religious people just like me who are able
| to be in both worlds. See my other comment.
| the-dude wrote:
| AFAIK the criticism comes down to the notion the 4 traits
| need to be viewed on a scale, not as a binary.
|
| I am under the impression the 4 traits do map fairly well to
| the 'big 5' [0] and there is little debate about that
| foundation.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
| sabellito wrote:
| While it's true that the theory talks about a spectrum,
| would you agree that's not how people (like the original
| comment) use it, given that everything is reduced to 4
| letters, with no nuance?
|
| Whatever 4 letter combination becomes a "class", like
| "debater", and somehow it becomes appropriate to draw
| conclusions about a person based on that.
|
| The big 5 has also been criticized quite a bit. The
| wikipedia article has a good section on that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#C
| r...
| rpastuszak wrote:
| The big 5 is often considered simplistic, given the complex
| nature of human personality. It was called the "psychology
| of the stranger".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I am under the impression the 4 traits do map fairly well
| to the 'big 5'
|
| Of the four axes of types on MBTI, and ignoring weak
| correlations, two each have a strong correlation to a Big-5
| axis, one has a moderate correlation to an Big-5 axes, and
| the other has moderate correlations (one somewhat stronger)
| to two Big-5 axes (the weaker of which is one of the ones
| another MBTI axes has a strong correlation with.)
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| Something doesn't have to have scientific validity to be
| helpful. I don't agree with MBTI trying to make claims in the
| way that Big 5 does because it's rooted in more rigorous
| research. But it's also wrong to throw out models for this
| reason.
|
| Is there scientific criticism towards things like tarot,
| astrology, crystals, and so on? Sure. But does that make it
| invalid if it's a personal framework that helps you? You can
| be interested in something and get something out of an area
| of interest without believing in it. For example if I do a
| tarot reading you may start to judge that activity and say,
| "This isn't real, this isn't science based, this isn't
| telling the future, you're wasting your time." But I'm not
| you and you're making assumptions about the reason I'd be
| doing it. I don't have to believe in any kind of inherent
| "mystical" properties of tarot in order to use it as a form
| of introspection to help my creative process. And that's
| something that's personal and of value to me.
|
| I have trouble with social stuff because I'm autistic. MBTI
| gives me a framework to generalize interactions between
| people and a way for me to predict human behavior in a way
| that works for me. Is it perfect? No. I'm not claiming that.
| But there are patterns, and there are stereotypes, and by
| using it I've been able to predict social interactions and
| people's intentions/goals slightly better and it gives me
| comfort to use it.
|
| This is a good example of a video that matches my views on
| the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ea8SainI2o The
| person who has this channel understands the limitations of
| MBTI and has expanded the framework further to work on its
| weaknesses.
| revscat wrote:
| I read Russell, and sometime afterwards read [1] Becker, whose
| primary thesis is that all human behavior is driven by a denial
| of death, specifically the death of our own egos, so carefully
| crafted and shaped over a lifetime. I found this to be much more
| of an approachable philosophy, tied more closely to Darwinism
| than Russell ever was.
|
| Recommended.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death
| Zababa wrote:
| > Man differs from other animals in one very important respect,
| and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak,
| infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would
| keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he
| has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep, and does not wake until
| he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not
| like this.
|
| I've been thinking about this a lot recently. There are some days
| where I just don't feel like getting out of bed, and spend half a
| day to the full day in my bed. I don't even feel bad or
| depressed, at least I don't feel a direct negative feeling, I
| just don't want to do anything else. This reminded me of my cats,
| which spend most of the day sleeping/resting, sometimes go eat a
| bit, sometimes go play a bit. I don't know what to think about
| it. Is this peace? For some reason, it doesn't feel like it.
| Renaud wrote:
| Ataraxia, plenitude, serenity, all these are variations on the
| theme of attaining 'peace'. Whether it's religion (ie Buddhism)
| or philosophy (ie stoicism), there is this notion that the
| ultimate goal is to reach this state of contentment: not
| desiring more, not being driven by overwhelming emotions, just
| satisfied with what you have, regardless of what you think you
| can achieve, or what expectations others have of what you could
| achieve.
| [deleted]
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I find this article really interesting, but really difficult to
| read. Uses stuffy language to the point of showing off.
| fapjacks wrote:
| It's interesting to note that stoicism -- in my experience
| perhaps the most difficult thing I've ever done and still fight
| hard every day to follow -- could be said at its core to work
| against these baser motivations.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Considering this, one must ask deeper questions about one's
| view on life. Are these base motivations part of something
| bigger than one may one day assimilate rather than succumb to
| or separate from? What in our lives makes expression of base
| desire so detrimental to expression of other desires?
| cheschire wrote:
| This could be a nice way to further dig into the two human modes
| of desire and fear talked about in the Matrix Resurrections. I
| used to think pride and fear were the two modes, but I think
| "desire" is a nicer superset term.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| In energetic terms, localisable and quantifiable by biochemists,
| what is "desire"?
|
| How might we measure it?
| superkuh wrote:
| The closest jargon would be incentive salience in which
| activation of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental
| area which is necessary but probably not sufficient. If you're
| interested in the neurological substrates of wanting (desire)
| and liking (pleasure) than check out the review papers over at
| Berridge Lab,
| https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/research/...
|
| In mice they have a stain for the expression of a particular
| type of "early" expression gene which coincides (most of the
| time) with neural activity. But this kind of staining is only
| useful for animal models you can sacrifice. I suppose if you
| wanted to explore this in humans you'd have to use PET with
| some neuronal population specific ligand or some fMRI
| modality(s).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivational_salience - this
| wikipedia article is helpful, but they mistakenly (as was
| tradition) cite the neurological substrates of liking (the
| shell of the nucleus accumbens) as the source. And that isn't
| correct even if the ventral tegmental area (wanting) projects
| heavily to it.
| visarga wrote:
| Reinforcement Learning describes a mechanism based on goals:
| evaluate each situation you're in, select the best action,
| observe effect, learn the reward signal. We're born with a few
| instinctive desires which act as a base operating system for
| the brain.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Maybe cortisol levels.
|
| We usually appreciate 'desire' as desire for something positive
| but perhaps a better approximation would be separation from a
| state of peace.
| amatic wrote:
| >How might we measure it?
|
| That is a good question. A desire is a term of the mind, and it
| is not easily connected to the brain and physiology. The only
| one I can think of is the conscious desire to breathe - iirc,
| it is directly correlated to the amount of CO2 in the blood
| (not O2, the first suspect). We don't yet have strong
| correlates to hunger, for example, so it might take a while for
| other desires, but I would bet there would be some correlates.
| On the other hand, behavior can reveal a lot. Some economists
| would say we can find the strength of one desire by comparing
| it to another. How much of A are we willing to give in order to
| get some exact amount of B? It is not exactly measurement of
| desire, but we can end up with a list of priorities.
| amriksohata wrote:
| All these can be summed into greed, pride, jealousy etc.
|
| The biggest delusion for the human is to think I am the body. To
| know the human will die but behave like it will live forever due
| to being driven by the senses chasing sense objects
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