本文探讨了意志力和目标之间的关系，并以进化论为例，说明了人类的意志力是如何被塑造的。文章还指出，人类的意志力可能与进化目标不完全一致，这导致了现代社会中一些行为模式的出现。

🤔 **进化与意志力：** 进化是一个优化过程，它通过自然选择来塑造生物的特征。在早期，进化直接编码行为，例如“感知光线并向光生长”或“如果看到红色斑点，就与之交配”。随着生物的复杂化，进化开始赋予它们驱动力，例如饥饿和性欲，生物则自行找出满足这些驱动力的方法。例如，人类并非天生就知道如何打开冰箱吃奶酪，而是通过进化赋予的饥饿感，最终学会了这种行为。

🧐 **目标优化与意志力：** 文章提出了“目标优化器”的概念，它指的是一个系统，其目标与基础优化器密切相关，但并不完全一致。以进化为例，进化的目标是繁殖和基因传递，但人类的性欲只是满足这一目标的一种手段。在原始环境中，性行为是繁殖的可靠代理，因此进化没有理由让人类追求其他目标。然而，在现代社会，性行为已不再是繁殖的最佳代理，但人类的性欲仍然存在，这表明人类的意志力可能与进化的目标存在偏差。

🤯 **意志力的局限性：** 尽管人类拥有智慧，但他们仍然受到进化赋予的意志力的影响，这可能导致他们在现代社会中做出与进化目标不一致的行为。例如，人类知道进化赋予他们性欲是为了繁殖，但他们可能无法完全克服这种本能，导致不安全的性行为。

🧠 **意志力的意义：** 文章强调了意志力在人类行为中的重要性，并指出人类的意志力可能存在局限性。这提醒我们，人类的行为并非完全由理性控制，而是受到进化赋予的本能和驱力的影响。

🚀 **未来展望：** 文章没有明确提出对未来的展望，但我们可以推测，未来人类可能会通过科技手段来更好地理解和控制自己的意志力，从而更有效地实现自己的目标。

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/willpower-human-and-machine

Two paragraphs from the mesa-optimizers post, which I quoted again in the adaptation-executors post:

Consider evolution, optimizing the fitness of animals. For a long time, it did so very mechanically, inserting behaviors like “use this cell to detect light, then grow toward the light” or “if something has a red dot on its back, it might be a female of your species, you should mate with it”. As animals became more complicated, they started to do some of the work themselves. Evolution gave them drives, like hunger and lust, and the animals figured out ways to achieve those drives in their current situation. Evolution didn’t mechanically instill the behavior of opening my fridge and eating a Swiss Cheese slice. It instilled the hunger drive, and I figured out that the best way to satisfy it was to open my fridge and eat cheese.

And:

Mesa-optimizers would have an objective which is closely correlated with their base optimizer, but it might not be perfectly correlated. The classic example, again, is evolution. Evolution “wants” us to reproduce and pass on our genes. But my sex drive is just that: a sex drive. In the ancestral environment, where there was no porn or contraceptives, sex was a reliable proxy for reproduction; there was no reason for evolution to make me mesa-optimize for anything other than “have sex”. Now in the modern world, evolution’s proxy seems myopic - sex is a poor proxy for reproduction. I know this and I am pretty smart and that doesn’t matter. That is, just because I’m smart enough to know that evolution gave me a sex drive so I would reproduce - and not so I would have protected sex with somebody on the Pill - doesn’t mean I immediately change to wanting to reproduce instead. Evolution got one chance to set my value function when it created