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PhilGoetz comments on Things you are supposed to like - Less Wrong
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So, I should acquire additional terminal values so I can have higher absolute utility?
That's either wisdom or absurdity. It goes against my current model of rationality. But it seems to lead to winning, at least from the starting condition of having no values at all and thus not even being able to win or lose.
I guess it shouldn't be surprising that asking a question whose answer mystifies me leads to other questions that also mystify me. Maybe identifying a set of equivalent mysterious problems would be an advance.
A real life anecdote on altering taste, which is a related to art really:
The first time I tried a strong cheese, I didn't like it much (I came from a place that consumed relatively little dairy). However, I could see that others liked it, and expressed REALLY STRONGLY how much they liked it. So I kept trying different types until I did - then a great new gastronomic experience was opened to me, and my overall appreciation of food increased as a result. I call this winning.
Nowadays, whenever I speak to someone who "dislikes" a certain type of food, I always try to persuade them to try enough of it to like it, even if they don't want to like it now - because if they did like it, then they would regret not liking it, and it would make them appreciate more things as a result.
I can see this functioning similarly music: by not liking something that other people like, and not making an effort to like it (or worse, making an effort not to like it), you could be missing something really great.
The problem with altering preferences is, of course, that before you alter them, you apply your current preferences in your thinking, so the act of altering a preference always seems different in hindsight. "I was so naive to like this before!"; "I was missing so much before!"
My personal preference is to have as rich a world of enjoyable experiences as possible. Therefore, I strive to never have the thought "I don't want to like this", since it puts a limit on my appreciation of a category of things. In general, I'm the kind of person who "likes things". I don't know what that says about me...
Note that other people are also acting like you, and people who dislike a commonly liked food may be sick and tired of having it pushed on them.
I remember being in youth camp, volunteering every day to make the lunch packs so I could have something to eat without people discovering I was a deviant who hated butter/margarine.
One of the great ways to become a snob is do side-by-side comparisons (NancyLebovitz has links in another comment.) If you drink cheap bourbon immediately before expensive bourbon, the difference is highlighted compared to drinking them a week apart.
Many people who have done that have regretted it, though, because it ruins the cheap variety for them. Whenever they drink the cheap stuff, they think "this is so much worse than the good stuff," and so either their hobby becomes significantly more expensive or gets curtailed (because now they can only afford it a fourth of the time), and it's not clear that their overall experience is significantly better.
I, for example, have very picky tastes in food. The diet I choose for myself costs about $2-3 a day, and consists mostly of simple bread I make myself and water with a touch of lemon. I'm satisficed; would I be all that much better off if I made the investment to switch to steaks and cola?
Ah, but we know the difference there is that I'm sure you can appreciate the flavour of good steak and good cola if the situation calls for it, for example if you're treated to it in a restaurant. Choosing not to have something is a different matter to be simply unable to enjoy something that other people get great pleasure out of.
I guess I have the kind of personality which benefits most from the "I like everything" mindset, because I don't mind so much that something is worse than something else, as long as it's still good by my internal judgement. If I'm having supermarket shrimp, I know I could be having lobster, and even the shrimp would be tastier if it was freshly caught, but I don't really mind since I'm mostly thinking "mmmmmm... shrimp".
I am unaccustomed to carbonation, and thus find any colas distasteful. I have not been able to discern a quality difference between chicken and the few steaks that I have eaten.
As long as you wouldn't call a good steak "bad" and go "eww", I don't think you're missing out on too much. Being able to have the thought "hmm. Steak." is sufficient for my ideal.
I agree that good chicken is just as good as good steak.
A word of caution. If, having tried something a few times, you still find it repulsive, drop it. Your body may be telling you "this is poison", and when it does that, it is wise to pay attention.
If what you are saying makes sense, then the distinction between instrumental and terminal values is fundamentally wrong.
How committed are you to the distinction between instrumental and terminal values?
I continue to be unconvinced that humans actually have terminal values in any meaningful sense.
I'm not committed to it. But the SIAI conceptions of FAI and CEV are committed to it.
As long as my average expected utility over all choices available goes up, I'm down to get more goals, and even loose old ones. But if my average expected utility goes down, then screw getting a new value. Though in general, adding a new value does not imply getting rid of an old one; as long as you keep all your old values there is no danger in adding a new one.
But - this is your utility using a new function. If you can get more utility by changing your utility function, just change it to something easy, like "I value lying on my back in bed."
(Wait, I already value that pretty highly...)
Why do you assume that the difficulty of a modification to one's utility function does not depend on the nature of the modification? This seems unlikely to be the case.
It's not a question of difficulty. It's a question of whether it makes sense to adopt a new utility function in order to have higher utility.
I agree with dlthomas. Certain modifications are certainly easier to make than others. It's much easier to start liking britney spears (which i've recently been working on) than to start liking being dead, or sickness.
Ok. I can't help but wondering why of all the things to hack yourself to enjoy you would pick that. Never mind. I see that's part of the point.
It's not that bad of a choice, really. Liking or disliking Brittney Spears's music doesn't really matter much in the long run; she has a large corpus of performances for you to pick from; this corpus is freely available; and testing your success or failure is relatively easy.