I'm trying to find a formal understanding of a certain concept, and this concept is not what is normally called "preference", as in "likes". To distinguish from the word "preference", I used the label "formal preference" in the above comment to refer to this concept I don't fully understand. Maybe the adjective "formal" is inappropriate for something I can't formally define, but it's not an option to talk about a different concept, as I'm not interested in a different concept. Hence I'm confused about what you are really suggesting by
Until you invent one, please let's talk about what normal humans mean by "preference" instead.
For the purposes of FAI, what I'm discussing as "formal preference", which is the same as "morality", is clearly more important than likes.
I'd be willing to bet money that any formalization of "preference" that you invent, short of encoding the whole world into it, will still describe a property that some humans do modify within themselves. So we aren't locked in, but your AIs will be.
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.