You cannot help but do it every single time. Even when you choose what TV channel to watch. If you conscious mind doesn't do it, your subconscious will.
Making good cost/benefit decisions is how poor people move up financially, and making bad ones is how the rich become not-so-rich. (Like David Cassidy, who spent his wealth on drugs and parties and one day woke up jobless, friendless, and money-less. A similar story happened to Will Smith, though he managed to turn his life around, make better decisions, and regained his wealth.)
I'm not here to rag on good cost benefit analysis. Obviously resources are finite and we need to, both individually, and as a species or a moral collective or whatever, make somewhat rational use of the resources.
What I am trying, but apparently failing, to get across, is that optimizing a cost benefit analysis is not the primary mode of human existence. It may be, in some uselessly wide tautological sense, an inevitable aspect of it, but it doesn't characterize the human experience in toto. Most human beings do plenty of things which they don't consciously evaluate in such bloodless terms and, indeed, because there is no universal notion of cost or benefit, its unclear what your imaginary perfect analyzer would be up to in the first place.
Thus, if we are to preserve as valid the vast majority of human activities, we must deny the idea that literally every moment needs to be consciously optimized and embrace the counter-notion: that society be organized in such a way that we can sometimes, perhaps as often as possible, chill the fuck out.
> What I am trying, but apparently failing, to get across, is that optimizing a cost benefit analysis is not the primary mode of human existence.
I get what you're saying, but, with respect, I think you're wrong about that.
> It may be, in some uselessly wide tautological sense, an inevitable aspect of it,
As far as scientific consensus goes, I think it's pretty common to encounter the belief that life is "just" biological machinery and, ergo, evolution is a chemical tautology.
> but it doesn't characterize the human experience in toto.
But here it seems to me that you're verging into mysticism, which personally I don't mind but you have to call it out.
> Most human beings do plenty of things which they don't consciously evaluate in such bloodless terms
Yes, I agree, and in fact it seems to me to be a very recent, even modern, thing that people are doing that at all. I mean, accounting only began around 5k years ago, eh? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform )
> there is no universal notion of cost or benefit, its unclear what your imaginary perfect analyzer would be up to in the first place.
There is a universal notion, but it's self-referential: success at replication.
Again, this is a IRL chemical tautology: success at replication engenders new conditions that then bring about changes in the (virtual) fitness landscape engendering new adaptation. (E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event )
Thus the universal notion of benefit is a verb not a noun, further, it's a self-defining "emergent" notion.
Evolution and meta-evolution occur at the same time, are the same process.
From this POV, it's absolutely fascinating (IMO) that this process created self-aware individuals with intelligence that can, e.g. look at the night sky and see stars in all their celestial glory (as contrasted to mere tiny lights on a fixed fabric.)
> Thus, if we are to preserve as valid the vast majority of human activities...
(Just to mention in passing, I don't think we can evaluate the validity of human activity en mass for at least a few hundred million years or so. If we talking apes can't survive longer than the unintelligent dinosaurs I don't think any of our civilization(s) can be considered valid.)
...we must deny the idea that literally every moment needs to be consciously optimized...
(Again, I'm not saying that, and I don't think WalterBright meant that either, but it's not interesting IMO)
...and embrace the counter-notion: that society be organized in such a way that we can sometimes, perhaps as often as possible, chill the fuck out.
Now, here, you are talking my language friend! I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that I'm a fan of Bucky Fuller, in part because he basically said that our tech can support us with a high standard of living w/o "disadvantaging anyone" and we should be able to retire at 25 (etc.)
So, yeah, slack off. :-)
That's the other interesting question, IMO: is the evolution of intelligence the end of evolution or a change of form? (And this Q is complicated by the fact that intelligence is ambient (cf. M. Levin's work.))
I mean, what if we all slack off ("Let the robots do the work and we'll take their pay.") and get enslaved by Klingons or degenerate into blobs?
You cannot help but do it every single time. Even when you choose what TV channel to watch. If you conscious mind doesn't do it, your subconscious will.
Making good cost/benefit decisions is how poor people move up financially, and making bad ones is how the rich become not-so-rich. (Like David Cassidy, who spent his wealth on drugs and parties and one day woke up jobless, friendless, and money-less. A similar story happened to Will Smith, though he managed to turn his life around, make better decisions, and regained his wealth.)