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More notes on motivation.

	As we have pointed out before, human motivation fluctuates.  A
human may wish for anything that he can formulate.  One can even wish
that 2+2=7.  Moreover, one can have wishes about one's future wishes.
In fact, it is a consequence of people's fluctuating motivations that
one often wishes to restrain one's future wishes from satisfaction.
Thus one both wants to control the wishes themselves and even
stronger to arrange to physically frustrate certain future wishes.
The literary example is Odysseus having his men tie him to the
mast, plug their own ears, and agree not to obey him when he
will ask to be freed when he hears the Sirens.

	We could define a person to be consistently motivated if
he has no doesn't ever wish to frustrate or change his future motivations,
but instead wishes to satisfy them.  For such a person, it may
make sense to integrate utility over his lifetime.  He will obey
Bellman's principle of optimality.

	There is a sense in which people are ⊗weakly ⊗consistent 
in their motivations.  Namely, an alcoholic often wishes that
he were not alcoholic, attempts to readjust his motivations, and
attempts to frustrate his future desire for drink.  All this while
he is in self-improvement mode.  When he is on a drunk, he drinks,
but he doesn't wish that he were never in a self-improvement mode.
In fact the reverse, he can simultaneously want a drink and wish
that he didn't want a drink.  Thus at the higher level of what he
wishes his motivations were, he is consistent, and we can call
this weak consistency.  Presumably he can wish he wished his
motivations were different.

	Now suppose that a person can control either his future
motivations or his future physical possibilities.  To the extent
that he can, his motivations will become more consistent, or at
least his behavior will become explainable by a more consistent
motivational structure.

	Now suppose we have two or more people.  Can we establish
a motivation for this ⊗society?  In general we cannot.
In the first place, the members will have wishes about each
others motivations, and in the second they may love, like,
dislike or hate one another.  The interpersonal motivations
may be specific or general.  John may want Mary to love him
or he may want someone (anyone) to love him.
However, one can almost always establish some social preferences.
Thus there are some pairs of alternate events about which all
preferences agree.  One can often do more.  The members of
the society may be impersonally motivated at least part of the
time, i.e. they may be motivated to establish laws that govern
all equally.

Aside: The fundamental human right should be to secede from
society.  This was feasible when there was an open frontier,
and it should be a social goal to re-establish a frontier in
space.  Once this is possible again, the demands that any society
can make on an individual will be limited by his option to
secede.
Actually secessions will take place in groups, and this complicates
matters.  (The groups form for practical reasons, and because humans
are socially motivated.)

	Where socia∨ choice is necessary an approximate social
welfare function must be constructed or else unnecessary suffering
will occur.