Alignment has been a prevalent topic of discussion within the rationalist community. It encompasses the alignment of technology with human interest, focusing on concerns like AI safety, as well as the alignment among human beings, addressing coordination problems. However, all of these alignment challenges are downstream from a more fundamental misalignment in human existence: the misalignment between ourselves and our genes.

There's a fundamental conflict going on in our minds, which arises from competing interests of genes and consciousness. For genes, life is a Darwinian competition—a game where we fight against other organisms in order to gain power and resources, aiming to propagate our own genes more effectively than the competition. For consciousness, what is good is the quality of conscious experience. It should be heavenly rather than hellish, enjoyable without a lot of suffering. For genes, however, consciousness is enlisted as a means to an end, a tool to be used. Our genes and the evolutionary process as a whole have no consideration for suffering or happiness. This means that just about everything has not been optimized for the good of consciousness but for the propagation of genes in the ancestral environment.

The way our genes have us doing things often results in a great deal of unnecessary suffering. Thus, all of the built-in mental paradigms that we have been programmed with, whether by genes or society, should be carefully inspected and questioned. Frequently, it will be more beneficial to replace these legacy frameworks with new ones we've consciously chosen. Moreover, it's important to be aware that we harbor beliefs, thoughts, and inclinations that don't necessarily serve our conscious well-being.

What is good for consciousness? How can we act in our own best interest? There are many philosophies of how one should live life, but one that seems to serve as a solid foundation is: It is good for us to improve the quality of conscious experience—to orient ourselves so that life becomes more heavenly and less hellish. In other words—speaking metaphorically—to seek heaven and avoid hell, which represent the quality of experience that consciousness can experience right here and now. This provides a fundamental orientation and direction for living.

How do we know what is heavenly or hellish? We know it when we experience it. When we take an honest look at where we are, the quality of experience we have at this moment.^1 With wisdom we can find paradigms move us heavenward and shift our minds in that direction.

Maintaining fitness while upgrading the mind

In seeking to resolve the misalignment between genes and consciousness a concern may arise—if we deviate too much from the current arrangement, we may be undermining our fitness and thus our ability to sustain into the future. If this is so then such an attempt to deviate from the status quo would be limited and shortlived. However, finding a way to be in alignment with our best interest while maintaining the ability to sustain into the future has tremendous potential upside, and thus we should be diligent in pursuing the possibilities on this front.

Maintaining fitness while making improvements may not be as challenging as one might assume, given the significant differences between the modern environment and the environment for which genes are optimized. As the environment diverges further from our natural suitability, there's a growing incentive to override our default programming to adapt to the modern environment. Moreover, we can deliberately shift our environment and influence the dynamics of human competition by enacting laws and building systems that encourage a shift in psychology favorable to consciousness. In other words, arranging the environment so that the means to success in darwinian terms is compatible with a heavenly experience of existence. At an individual level, maintaining fitness is a matter of maintaining fit behaviors while the psychological baggage that comes with them is undone.

Defenses against realignment

Yet the mind is quick to dismiss the possibility of something better. This is a defense mechanism of the mind's programming, attempting to maintain the status quo and the state of misalignment. Just as there are mechanisms that correct our DNA to prevent new mutations, there are various layers of defense against modifying the old programming of the mind.

It is difficult to provide an exhaustive account of all these defense mechanisms, and the numerous ways in which they manifest. They encompass stubbornness, closed-mindedness, ignorance of alternatives, conformity, orthodoxy, a bias toward the status quo, “ugh fields”, justification, rationalization, and various appeals—to common sense, to normalcy, to what is natural, to humanness. Above all, our greatest obstacle to changing our mind is our attachment to the known and fear of the unknown. We can see this fear of the unknown in the child’s fear of monsters under the bed, or on those old maps that say of the unexplored regions, “here be dragons”.

One could liken the challenge of overcoming these defense me chanisms to change old mind patterns to Truman's journey in "The Truman Show" which provides an apt allegory. To gain his freedom, Truman must be willing to go against the grain of what the world seems to be telling him, break his regular routines and habits, and confront deep-seated fears instilled by the society around him. His motivation stems from the conviction that something peculiar underlies the reality he inhabits, and he is determined to uncover it. In real life, many individuals faced with such an opportunity fear that they will encounter something terrible as the truth of reality, so they choose to remain where they are, ensconced within cherished illusions.

However, those who have dared to investigate have reported back to us: there are paths to something better, and the fear and doubt that seem to obstruct the way are nothing more than misdirection—a defense mechanism of the Darwinian mind.

Who are those who dared to investigate? They are those who dared to go against the grain of prevailing mind patterns, the ones who questioned everything at great depth.

A tool for realignment

There is a need for realignment with our true best interest, but what could serve as our tool when there seems to be little within us that could be considered trustworthy? Our greatest ally will be a faculty that is closely related to consciousness—conscious awareness. By becoming aware of the mind, we can start to notice things about how it actually works, rather than being deceived by a false sense of already knowing. We don’t really know how our mind works, just as we don’t really know where our best interest lies. Much of what we think we know are tricks designed to keep us confined in the status quo. Through greater awareness and a willingness to introspect we can learn the truth directly.

Related: The games we are good at

[1]: Surprisingly, it seems most people usually do not have clear awareness of how they feel in each moment, despite this being the most crucial indicator of how life is going. This is one of the key factors for how the misalignment remains in place.