Priorities

Maslow

Instinct

Be aware of instinct's limitations and use rationality to ensure that priorities are really what you think is appropriate.

modes, emotion, social

priorities

Relationship with Other Components.

Further reading.

Consider values (needs/wants/desires) and their goals and priorities (weights). Guides optimisation qv objective function Z (based on needs, etc); ie, map from values to Z terms. There may be little point assessing current achievement (hence satisfaction and motivation) because what matters is the difference we can make to achievement (etc), which we can't assess until after SD/opt. However, doing so could guide (and possibly misguide) problem-assessment qv and option-generation qv.

• I'm not strictly adhering to Maslow's layers; just the underlying principle that people have multiple needs and desires, and can assign differing priorities to each one. Individuals differ in the priorities they assign to the various needs: ethics, beliefs, values.
• Needs and wants. Food vs. art. Some 'needs' (eg, cognitive) are more like optional personal interests. Failure to satisfy the lowest-level (physiological) needs results in physical consequences. Failure to satisfy other ‘deficiency needs’ (eg, esteem, friendship and love, security) results in sadness, anxiety and tension (ie, emotions). The nature of such consequences probably influences goal prioritisation and motivation.
• Self vs. others (social, self-sacrifice of $ and even life for children and maybe others) cf. time-scope, thing-scope, familiarity-bias.
• Priorities (including those motivated by instinct bestowed by evolution) tend to be self-centred on the individual. Even community-focused actions are presented as being motivated by self-interest. Since evolution’s goal is survival of the species rather than the individual, can we rely on individuals being motivated to do what’s best for the species as a whole (now and future)?
• Distinguish between what priorities usually are (derived from instinct) and what they need to become (given problems that evolution has not equipped us for). If the self-centred view is correct, we need to derive personal pleasure (emotion qv) (or some other personal reward) from things that benefit future/remote others (or animals or inanimate). (Refer to philosophy that all motivation is for self-interest; there is no genuine altruism.)
• Maslow's hierarchy is often referred to as 'Maslow's Pyramid'. A pyramid is a tomb. Let us not all end up entombed by inappropriate priorities. [too pointed?]
• Maybe not everyone has every priority. Some people may be happy to plateau below the potential summit. [so what?]
• instinct qv prioritises motivation for lower (physiological) goals[BW], but less so for community, art, etc. Motivation for higher goals may require other thinking processes. We can (and should) use rationality to influence our choice of goal.
• Political and social systems can influence individuals’ motivations to pursue specific needs.
• Emotion (compassion): needs that can interfere with a utilitarian optimum.
• time dimension: maximise quality of life now, or save for the future? Urgent vs. important.
• A single problem can have multiple consequences (including side-effects): thing-scope qv. Solutions will usually add additional consequences: no-good-options qv. The range of consequences will involve multiple priorities.
• Independence (personal freedom) vs. interdependence (we-awareness[BW], community-minded thinking). "Nobody can tell me what to do." Extreme case of familiarity-bias? Relationship with insignificance qv, tiny-impacts qv (‘I can be independent because everyone else will toe the party line and fix the problem’).

Need a generic term for Maslow 'needs' (critical for life through to interests; self-sacrifice; values). Options: needs, motivations, values, priorities, goals, wants, desires, inputs, resources, dependencies, ...

Although all needs are perceived and managed by our brains, some are directly related to physiological requirements (heartbeat, breathing, etc). These will often be autonomic or instinctive. However, other needs are more malleable and can be adjusted by conscious thought (like intuition?); eg, ...

For each need, assess:

• Goal (aka target) (g). The level of achievement required to feel that a need has been satisfied; ie, the level of satisfaction that will result in no motivation to undertake actions to further increase achievement in this need. A goal for a particular need may increase as more important needs get satisfied. For example, a starving person would have a very low goal for the aesthetic need. However, if all of the person’s other needs get satisfied, the person may then have a higher goal for the aesthetic need. (Or do they just not pursue the need for art initially because it is relatively low priority? Qualitative/quantitative. Examples of quantitative: salary, number of children, BMI. goal may be compared to achievement during evaluation qv.
• Priority (weight? importance? value?) (w). Priority is the relative level of importance (weighting) of a need; the desirability for that need to be satisfied. It is independent of current achievement and is an attribute of the need itself. Priority might be the same as values, or a direct consqquence thereof. Qualitative/quantitative.
• Achievement (a) (optional). Achievement is the extent to which a need has been attained (ie, current or expected level of performance). The level of achievement can be increased by performing relevant actions. Achievement is not relative to goal. Achievement is related to effect on system node (systems-thinking qv).
• Satisfaction (s) (optional). Satisfaction is the extent to which the current level of achievement matches the goal for that need. Low satisfaction may be perceived via emotion (and maybe instinct, etc: assessors). satisfaction[n] = achievement[n] - goal[n].
• Motivation (m) (optional). Motivation is the incentive that drives an individual to satisfy a need. It will depend on the level of satisfaction for the need and the priority of the need. motivation[n] = -satisfaction[n] * priority[n] = (goal[n] - achievement[n]) * priority[n], where n is need. Motivation may map to pressure in system dynamics (stock and flow: what motivates a flow to flow?): systems-thinking qv.

Sources/Inputs

• Modes qv (all, but especially instinct?). Memory affects some modes.
• Emotion (and other assessors; eg, reasoning?)
• Cultural Evolution (Jebelli 26) Social (society, family, etc)

Self-awareness qv and open-mindedness qv should be used to adjust raw inputs (above).

Agent

If problem-assessment system-agent is 'what should WE do' as opposed to 'what should I do', priorities should perhaps be we-based rather than I-based.

If system-agent is 'we' and action-agent is 'I' (as will be the case for personal consideration of wider problems, see problem-assessment qv), we may feel a negative emotional response when considering satisfaction and finding it to be low. This may be limited by consideration of RofR (problem-assessment qv): the individual shouldn't feel responsible for things beyond their control.

Categories

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Relative Priorities

Quip: "Priorities are relative."

Perhaps a way to interpret the pyramid is that lower levels award us more points than do the levels above. All else being equal, we'd start at the bottom and work our way progressively upwards, because that would be the most efficient way of accruing points. However, if we find a blockage at one level, we can skip it and go to the next level up.

Priorities change over time, including regression. Achievement in one priority may need continual maintenance; eg, continual food. Failure to satisfy a previously-satisfied need will cause us to regress down the pyramid.

As a society, how do we justify spending public money on art, entertainment, space exploration, etc, when some people are starving or dying from preventable disease? In practice, we tacitly accept that human life isn't a priority that overwhelms all others; if it was, we would allocate all of the budget to heath and defence. At a personal level, we would never indulge in our favourite foods and drinks.

Emotion qv (eg, compassion) influence need priorities. Emotion can stimulate the default network, increasing intuition qv (Jebelli 118-119). Intuition can help us to identify connections between nodes that we might otherwise not consider (cf. systems-thinking qv).

Conflicting priorities can cause us to deny or ignore issues; eg, a desire for wealth encourages dismissing GW.

READ MORE example: my tee-shirt has a small but visible tear. It's still perfectly serviceable but probably isn't a good look. I expect that people judge me for wearing imperfect clothes, so I should throw it away. But if consumption and waste are problems (hence priorities), should I reduce my clothing standards and keep wearing it? Should others reduce their expectations of me so I don't feel judged by wearing it?

Money

Money is not a fundamental need. It is a proxy or surrogate for other needs. It can be exchanged for some sorts of actual needs (eg, food, aesthetic). For some people, it is also an indicator of prestige/importance, hence esteem.

$ (eg, fines) can be used to convert one priority to another. For example, fining someone for anti-social behaviour (eg, selfish driving, killing protected species) can limit their ability to buy food or other things that are more important to them than being considerate of others.

Limited resources is a very real constraint when considering hard problems (eg, GW). This will find its way into optimisation qv. It's common for individuals to expect governments to do everything possible, without considering where the resources would come from (and other consequences).

Satisfaction

When is a priority satisfied? Many seek ever-greater luxury, libido, etc. We need to encourage people to ascend rather spread unnecessarily widely across the lower levels. Re "over-satisfying" some goals: I read one article which thought this happens out of frustration not being able to satisfy the needs on a higher/other level.[BW] Is this a thinking-trap?

While a need isn't fully satisfied, achieving more of it is a good thing. This could lead to the generalisation (intuition qv) that more is always better. After the need is 100% satisfied, that could result in over-eating, greed, etc.

Values

Are values just relative ‘need’ priorities?[BW] Or are they a particular high-level 'need' (eg, ethical, conscience), whereas lower-level needs just have 'goals' rather than 'values'?

A value (eg, not stealing) may restrict pursuit of a nominally more important goal (eg, eating).[BW]

Are personal beliefs and values inevitably subjective? Is there any absolute right and wrong (eg, body mutilation)? [It's not for me to say.]