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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Suffering - Less Wrong
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I will help a suffering thing if it benefits me to help it, or if the social contract requires me to. Otherwise I will walk away.
I adopted this cruel position after going through one long relationship where I constantly demanded emotional "help" from the girl, then another relationship soon afterwards where the girl constantly demanded similar "help" from me. Both those situations felt so sick that I finally understood: participating in any guilt-trip scenario makes you a worse person, no matter whether you're tripping or being tripped. And it also makes the world worse off: being openly vulnerable to guilt-tripping encourages more guilt-tripping all around.
So relax and follow your own utility - this will incentivize others to incentivize you to help them, so everyone will treat you well, and you'll treat them well in advance for the same reason.
I think it helps to distinguish moral injunctions from statements about human preference. First are the heuristics, while latter are the statements of truth. A "position" is a heuristic, but it isn't necessarily the right thing to do, in some of the case where it applies. Generalization from personal experience may be useful on average, but doesn't give knowledge about preference with certainty. When you "follow you own utility", you are merely following your imperfect understanding of your own utility, and there is always a potential for getting the map closer to reality.
You're talking about preferences over outcomes and you're right that they don't change much. I interpreted Tiiba as asking about preferences over actions ("whose goals you would want to further"), those depend on heuristics.
I don't understand what you're saying here...