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Vladimir_Nesov comments on The Wannabe Rational - Less Wrong
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It is much closer to what I'm talking about.
Orthonormal writes that in the absence of a Framework of Objective Value, he found he still cared about things (the welfare of friends and family, the fate of the world, the truth of my his beliefs, etc).
In contrast, I find my caring begins fading away. Some values go quickly and go first -- the fate of the world, the truth of my own beliefs -- but other values linger, long enough for me to question the validity of a worldview that would leave me indifferent to my family.
Orthonormal also writes that in response to my hypothetical question about purpose,
And none of these are terminal values for me. Existence, happiness, fun and beauty are pretty much completely meaningless to me in of themselves. In fact, the something which causes me to hesitate when I might feel indifference to my family is a feeling of responsibility.
It occurs to me that satisfying my moral responsibility might be a terminal value for me. If I have none; if it really is the case that I have no moral responsibility to exist and love, I'd happily not exist and not love.
Orthonormal, yourself, Eliezer, all seem to argue that value nihilism just doesn't happen. Others concede that nihilism does happen, but that this doesn't bother them or that they'd rather sit with an uncomfortable truth than be deluded. So perhaps it's the case that people are intrinsically motivated in different ways, or that people have different thresholds for how much lack of meaning they can tolerate. Or other 'solutions' come to mind.
You are not really entitled to your own stated values. You can't just assert that beauty is meaningless to you and through this act make it so. If beauty is important to you, being absolutely convinced that it's not won't make it unimportant. You are simply wrong and confused about your values, at which point getting a better conscious understanding of what is "morality" becomes even more important than if you were naive and relied on natural intuition alone.
I'm not sure to what extent terminal values can be chosen or not, but it seems to me that (the following slightly different than what you were describing) if you become absolutely convinced that your values aren't important, then it would be difficult to continue thinking your values are important. Maybe the fact that I can't be convinced of the unimportance of my values explains why I can't really be convinced there's no Framework of Objective Value, since my brain keeps outputting that this would make my values unimportant. But maybe, by the end of this thread, my brain will stop outputting that. I'm willing to do the necessary mental work.
By the way, Furcas seemed to understand the negation of value I'm experiencing via an analogy of solipsism.
One last time, importance ≠ universality.
If we had been Babyeaters, we would think that eating babies is the right-B thing to do. This doesn't in any way imply we should be enthusiastic or even blasé about baby-eating, because we value the right thing, not the right-B thing that expresses the Babyeaters' morality!
I understand that you can't imagine a value being important without it being completely objective and universal. But you can start by admitting that the concept of important-to-you value is at least distinct from the concept of an objective or universal value!
Imagine first that there is an objective value that you just don't care about. Easy, right? Next, imagine that there is something you care about, deeply, that just isn't an objective value, but which your world would be awful/bland/horrifying without. Now give yourself permission to care about that thing anyway.
This the best (very) short guide to naturalistic metaethics I've read so far.
This is very helpful. The only thing I would clarify is that the lesson I need to learn is that importance ≠ objectivity. (I'm not at all concerned about universality.)
I'm not sure. With a squirrel in the universe, I would have thought the universe was better with more nuts than with less. I can understand there being no objective value, but I can't understand objective value being causally or meaningfully distinct from the subjective value.
Hm. I have no problem with 'permission'. I just find that I don't care about caring about it. If it's not actually horrible, then let the universe fill up with it! My impression is that intellectually (not viscerally, of course) I fail to weight my subjective view of things. If some mathematical proof really convinced me that something I thought subjectively horrible was objectively good, I think I would start liking it.
(The only issue, that I mentioned before, is that a sense of moral responsibility would prevent me from being convinced by a mathematical proof to suddenly acquire beliefs that would cause me to do something I've already learned is immoral. I would have to consider the probability that I'm insane or hallucinating the proof, etc.)