Tesseract comments on Choose To Be Happy - Less Wrong

20 Post author: DanArmak 01 January 2011 10:50PM

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Comment author: Tesseract 02 January 2011 08:03:32PM 2 points [-]

Our emotions are not synonymous with our values, nor directly derived from them. If they were, we would all be rational, all the time!

You have misunderstood my entire point. I know that emotions don't naturally reflect values. The argument was over whether achieving your values requires you to change your emotions to reflect them, or if you can be equally motivated by values alone.

From the original post:

...you are horrified by the huge amounts of suffering. You have shut up and calculated, and the calculation output that you should feel 3^^^3 times as bad as over a stubbed toe. And a stubbed toe can be pretty bad.

In other words, you have decided that your emotions need to be realigned to reflect (what your value system says about) the state of the world. DanArmak argued that this is false. I argued that it is generally true.

Comment author: pjeby 02 January 2011 08:15:29PM 4 points [-]

In other words, you have decided that your emotions need to be realigned to reflect (what your value system says about) the state of the world. DanArmak argued that this is false. I argued that it is generally true.

Dan is in error, insofar as his argument implied that one should have one's emotions conflict with one's true values.

You, however are in error insofar as your arguments praise feeling bad as a path to doing good.

I agree with you that your emotions should reflect your values. OTOH, I agree with Dan that the optimal choice of emotion to reflect one's values will rarely be feeling bad, unless there is some sort of social goal involved (such as bonding with a group through a shared experience of grief or outrage).

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