Robert Trivers
Article
Robert Trivers is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 16, 2022 and February 21, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “they also mention a much more clever theory, dating back to Robert Trivers”; “dating back to Robert Trivers”; “Robert Trivers’ work on self-deception helps formalize this”. It most often appears alongside /r/slatestarcodex, ACX, adaptation-executors.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: May 16, 2022
- Last seen: February 21, 2025
Appears In
Related Pages
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- slatestarcodex (1 shared issues)
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- ACX (1 shared issues)
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- adaptation-executors (1 shared issues)
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- Adrian (1 shared issues)
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- AM (1 shared issues)
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- Anthropic principle (1 shared issues)
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- Aristotle (1 shared issues)
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- Baryon number conservation (1 shared issues)
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- Bentham (1 shared issues)
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- Bentham’s Bulldog (1 shared issues)
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- Bentham’s Bulldog (1 shared issues)
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- Boltzmann brain (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
But they also mention a much more clever theory, dating back to Robert Trivers:
Inline links: Robert Trivers
It sounds prima facie reasonable to say qualia aren’t necessarily correlated with the material universe. But when you think about this more clearly, it requires a total breakdown of any relationship between the experiencing self, the verbally reporting self, and the decision-making self. This would be an absurd way for an organism to evolve (Robert Trivers’ work on self-deception helps formalize this, but shouldn’t be necessary for it to be obvious). Once you put it like this, I think it makes sense that whatever qualia are, evolution naturally had to connect the “negative reinforcement” wire to the “unpleasant qualia” button.
Inline links: Robert Trivers’ work on self-deception