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thomblake comments on Why the beliefs/values dichotomy? - Less Wrong
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I dispute your premise: what makes you so sure people do decompose their thoughts into beliefs and values, and find these to be natural, distinct categories? Consider the politics as mind-killer phenomenon. That can be expressed as, "People put your words into a broader context of whether they threaten their interests, and argue for or against your statements on that basis."
For example, consider the difficulty you will have communicating your position if you believe both a) global warming is unlikely to cause any significant problems in the business-as-usual scenario, b) high taxes on CO2 emissions should be levied. (e.g., you believe it's a good idea as an insurance policy and can be done in a way that blocks most of the economic damage)
(Yes, I had to use a present example to make the reactions easier to imagine.)
The "ought" is so tightly coupled to the "is", that in any case where the "ought" actually matters, the "is" comes along for the ride.
Note: this is related to the problem I had with the exposition of could/would/should agents: if you say humans are CSAs, what's an example of an intelligent agent that isn't?
I'm confused about this. Consider these statements:
A. "I believe that my shirt is red."
B. "I value cheese."
Are you claiming that:
If you strictly mean 1 or 2, I can construct a counterexample. 3 is indeed counterintuitive to me. 4 seems uncontroversial (the putative is/ought problem aside)
If I had to say, it would be a strong version of 4: in conceptspace, people naturally make groupings that put is- and ought-statements together. But looking back at the post, I definitely have quite a bit to clarify.
When I refer to what humans do, I'm trying to look at the general case. Obviously, if you direct someone's attention to the issue of is/ought, then they can break down thoughts into values and beliefs without much training. However, in the absence of such a deliberate step, I do not think people normally make a distinction.
I'm reminded of the explanation in pjeby's earlier piece: people instinctively put xml-tags of "good" or "bad" onto different things, blurring the distinction between "X is good" and "Y is a reason to deem X good". That is why we have to worry about the halo effect, where you disbelieve everything negative about something you value, even if such negatives are woefully insufficient to justify not valuing it.
From the computational perspective, this can be viewed as a shortcut to having to methodically analyze all the positives and negatives of any course of action, and getting stuck thinking instead of acting. But if this is how the mind really works, it's not really reducible to a CSA, without severe stretching of the meaning.