Metrics of Importance (Part 2) — The Behaviour Iceberg

An essay on how we come to care about things

See also: Metrics of importance (Part 1)

Definitions

(For the purpose of this essay:)

• ‘Good’ / ‘Bad’ = Subjective description of what is desirable or undesirable
• Morality = An internal framework differentiate what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’…morality is the recipe, metrics of importance are the ingredients
• Metrics of importance = Individual metrics that are used to measure whether an outcome is ‘good’ or ‘bad’

0. Introduction

0.1 What I talked about in Part 1

• I wrote Metrics of Importance part 1 because I observed that what people claimed was important, and how they acted were mismatched
• I theorised that if people could better articulate WHAT they thought was important, and WHY, that this would help conversations run more smoothly [1]

0.2 What I’m going to talk about in Part 2

• A meta-question remains…how do people decide what’s important?
• What’s the underlying psychology / machinery that leads someone to care about one thing and not another?

0.3 Introducing the iceberg

If you imagine human behaviour as an iceberg (See figure 1 below)…

• Metrics of Importance Part 1 was focussed on layers 1 and 2
• Metrics of Importance Part 2 will focus on layers 3 and 4

LAYER 1 — At the surface, you have observable behaviour: The stuff you SEE people do or say

LAYER 2 — Under the surface you have motivations: The metrics of importance and the ACTUAL beliefs that motivate observable actions

LAYER 3 — Underneath you have the machinery behind motivation: We roughly know that human motivations are influenced by a mix of biology and environment (e.g. hormones, accumulated life experiences)

LAYER 4 — Underpinning everything else, you have universal constraints: These are the rules / properties of the universe, the conditions that give rise to biology and environment — including physical, temporal, and mathematical constraints

Figure 1. The human behaviour iceberg. At the top you have what you see. Below is what motivated it. Below is what caused the motivation. And so on…

1. Each layer of the human behaviour iceberg is influenced by the layers below

The way I see it, ‘human behaviour’ is the output at the end of a really complex causal chain.

Observable behaviour is influenced by motivations, motivations are influenced by biology + environment, biology + environment are influenced by universal constraints.

So when I’m evaluating what a person is saying or doing, I try to think beyond the surface level signals, to build a model of what lies underneath…what does their behaviour say about their motivations, state of mind, etc.

This can get convoluted quickly. The causal chain is so complex, so long, that you could keep asking questions…until you hit the wall that is universal constraints (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The relationships between different layers of the human behaviour iceberg. Universal constraints affect biology and environment (e.g. natural selection, element availability, etc). Biology and environment provide the machinery that decide motivation (e.g. hormones, neurotransmitters, accumulated experiences influence how people think and feel). A person’s motivations manifest as observable behaviours (e.g. the things people say and do are influenced by their feelings at the time).

2. Universal constraints underpin the whole iceberg

The same physical, temporal, and mathematical constraints govern everything. The limitations in resource availability that are baked into the universe have knock-on effects on the limitations you see downstream — in biology, in motivations, etc (Figure 3).

Here are some examples of important universal constraints:

2.1. Element availability

• We have a certain number / range of elements available in the universe

2.2. Conservation laws

• Conservation of Energy: Energy can’t be created or destroyed
• Conservation of Momentum: The total linear or angular momentum of a closed system remains constant over time
• Conservation of Mass-Energy: mass and energy are interchangeable (E=mc²)

2.3. Entropy

• The constant rise of entropy is what we perceive as ‘time moving forward’
• See also: heat death of the universe

Figure 3: Iceberg labelled to highlight where ‘imperfections’ are introduced into human behaviour.

3. How do universal constraints affect biology?

The universal constraints are the ingredients we have to work with. B

iology happens when you take those ingredients and get them to (1) self-assemble, (2) survive, and (3) propagate.

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Because of universal constraints, most (if not all) biological organisms need to have certain functionalities:

3.1. Keep a boundary; keep concentrated

• Biological organisms are, basically by definition, ‘discrete units’ that can self-assemble, survive, and propagate
• A crucial part of being a discrete biological organism is, having a defined boundary between what is ‘self’ and what is ‘non-self’
• The existence of boundaries is useful from a chemical perspective too: you can build concentration gradients, pressure gradients, etc.
• The type of boundary used may differ depending on the organism and purpose (cell membranes, capsules, cell walls…), and sometimes it can get blurry. But the general rule persists

3.2. Consume to grow

• Matter can’t be created or destroyed
• So biological organisms need to consume material, in order to grow
• All else being equal, there’s a selection pressure for biological organisms to obtain resources effectively
• ANALOGY: If you want to make a building, you need to source bricks from somewhere. You can’t just spontaneously sprout a building.

3.3. Resource-efficiency

• Resources on planet Earth are in limited supply
• If you can’t manage / budget your resources appropriately, you’ll die
• All else being equal, there’s a selection pressure for biological organisms to require fewer resources (time, energy, food, etc)
• More resources consumed = more risk, because collecting resources requires you to invest time and energy that you might not get back

3.4. It’s easier to break something than it is to improve it

• If you’ve ever had to deal with a system of any kind you’ll understand this, intuitively
• Improvement requires concentrating ‘valuable things’ and repelling ‘less valuable things’
• Typically, valuable things are more scarce than less valuable things
• Changes in a system are more likely to mess you up, than they are to help you acquire ‘more value’
• This rather simple concept actually has far-reaching implications for biological organisms
• E.g. genetic mutations are more likely to harm than help an organism survive. It’s hard to change an organism’s genetic code a LOT while also preserving what allowed the organism to survive + thrive in the first place [2]

4. How do biological constraints influence motivation?

TLDR: Putting aside supernatural explanations, all human behaviour can be traced back to natural causes (i.e explained in terms of biology and how it responds to environmental cues).

4.1. Biology is the underlying mechanism for behaviour + thoughts + emotions

• Biology is like the gearbox for all human behaviour [3]
• All of our ‘internal goals’ — like our moral compasses, political beliefs, whatever — are shaped by a combo of biological machinery reacting to environmental cues
• E.g. Hormones like cortisol, endogenous opioids, serotonin, dopamine, etc combine to produce the emergent properties that are ‘emotion’
• E.g. The hippocampus, amygdala and pre-frontal cortex interact and allow us to ‘store memories’ and then ‘retrieve that information’, along with ‘emotional connotations’ for those memories
• The scientific consensus appears to be that we evolved the biological machinery that we have now, because it was historically beneficial for survival + reproduction
• E.g. morality is a trait that was evolutionarily selected for in humans, because humans are social animals, and having a shared moral compass has historically helped social groups survive better [4]

4.2. Lossy compression of ideas is more resource-efficient, which is why we don’t have the capacity to ‘self-assess’ super well

• The ‘thought’ and ‘feeling’ architecture that we have currently is pretty complex, but it’s still imperfect
• Our cognitive and emotional capacities are limited by selection pressures, and thus we have kept around various sub-optimal functions
• E.g. We could have all evolved perfect memories, but we didn’t. It’s overkill, you don’t need to remember all past life experiences to survive + reproduce. Just because an organism could have a helpful cool function doesn’t mean it will develop or keep that helpful cool function
• E.g. Humans could have perhaps developed the ability to accurately self-assess biochemistry, but we didn’t. At least not consciously. To borrow a term from AI, we don’t intuitively understand / can’t measure our own neural weights.
• E.g. We aren’t wired to decouple reality from feelings — we can try, but ultimately it’s very difficult to separate where our “senses” end and our “brain interpreting those senses” begins

5. Conclusions

This was a very dense essay, but TLDR:

• Observable human behaviour is just the tip of the iceberg
• Underneath is a whole mess of interacting factors which are out of our control (see also: Free will part 1 for more hot takes on this)
• Sometimes actions may appear reasonless, but they can’t be! Everything has a reason, even if we don’t know it yet
• Unless you believe in a supernatural explanation…everything in human behaviour can be explained away by asking enough questions
• Universal constraints are the guidelines that underpin everything else…from biology, geography, psychology, etc.

Footnotes

[1] But this is easier said than done…of course, lots of others have talked about similar topics, and we still make the same mistakes over and over. I’d recommend checking out the Theory of Change (ToC) methodology for example (this is a method for figuring out how to get from point A → B, encouraging you to think about what metrics to rely on, and what assumptions you’re relying on)

[2] Resource availability + the principle that “breaking is easier than making” is part of the reason why biological organisms don’t converge on omnipotence.

It’s not like if we waited into infinity, we would be guaranteed to end up with a gigachad animal that can conquer anything, regardless of environment.

That’s not how biology works…Evolution happens on a local scale, it can’t ‘see into the future’ and keep around a resource-intensive animal just because it will one day be fit enough. It needs to be fit for current conditions!

[3] I thought of this analogy, and it seems appropriate, but I can’t drive a manual. So forgive me if that’s actually not what gearboxes do.

[4] I am admittedly NOT well-versed in the neuroscience underpinning moral decision-making in humans. But if you’re interested in the topic, I found some relevant articles that might be of interest to you:

• Gray, Young, and Waytz 2012: Discusses how our ability to perceive who has a ‘mind’ and who doesn’t (a process called ‘mind perception’) underpins moral judgement
• Yoder and Decety 2019: Discusses how the neuroscience behind psychopaths (who have atypical neural processing / lack of concern for moral rules) may influence how we deal with them in the legal system
• Ruff and Fehr 2014: Discusses the mechanisms that underpin social and non-social decision-making