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MaoShan comments on Secrets of the eliminati - Less Wrong
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But if whenever I eat dinner at 6I sleep better than when eating dinner at 8, can I not say that I prefer dinner at 6 over dinner at 8? Which would be one step over saying I prefer to sleep well than not.
I think we could have a better view if we consider many preferences in action. Taking your cyonics example, maybe I prefer to live (to a certain degree), prefer to conform, and prefer to procrastinate. In the burning-building situation, the living preference is playing more or less alone, while in the cryonics situation, preferences interact somewhat like oppsite forces and then motion happens in the winning side. Maybe this is what makes preferences seem like varying?
Or is it that preferences are what you get when you consider future situations, in effect removing the influence of your instincts? If I consistently applied the rationale to both situations (cryonics, burning building), and came up with the conclusion that I would prefer not to flee the burning building, that might make me a "true rationalist", but only until the point that the building was on fire. No matter what my "preferences" are, they will (rightly so) be over-ridden by my survival instincts. So, is there any practical purpose to deciding what my preferences are? I'd much rather have my instincts extrapolated and provided for.
Depends on the extent to which you consider your instincts a part of you. Equally, if you cannot afford cryonics, you could argue that your preferences to sign up or not are irrelevant. No matter what your "preferences" are, they will be overridden by your budget.