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Logos01 comments on Be Happier - Less Wrong
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Comments (273)
intrinsic values are values that a thing has merely by being what it is.
My question from the outset was "what's the use of happiness?" Responding to that with "its own sake" doesn't answer my question. To say that 'being useful is useful for its own sake' is to make an intrinsic utilitity statement of utility.
We -- or rather I -- framed this question in terms of utility from the outset.
Now -- hedonism is the default consensus view here on LessWrong.com. (obviously I am a dissenter. My personal history as being clinically anhedonic maaaaay have something to do with this.) the argument is made by hedonistic utilitarians that pleasure is the "measure of utility". That is; utility is pleasure; pleasure is utility.
But of course it's trivially easy to demonstrate the paucity of this reasoning -- we need only look to the wireheading existential failure mode, and other variations of it, to acknowledge that pleasure for pleasure's own sake is not an intrinsic value.
Without having intrinsic value, a value cannot be a terminal value; the terms are synonymous.
The position you are here aligning with is called "intrinsic nihilism". It claims that there are zero terminal/intrinsic goods. Now -- there's nothing wrong with that, from the outside view.
But it does leave us at something of an impasse; how could you then justify seeking happiness? If there are no intrinsic goods then your goals are entirely arbitrary. Which means that you must have reasoning for continuing to seek them out -- otherwise you would not continue to retain those arbitrary goals.
Absolutely -- our evolutionary history plays into this. But then, our evolutionary history includes rapine and slaughter. And we curttail that in lieu of creating a better society. So why does 'happiness' get a free pass from this inspection?
What? Really?
(I'm thinking of this and this.)
No, not really.
Or, at least, not obviously.
I can see making an argument that most LW users implicitly adopt a hedonistic model when thinking about stuff-people-value, even if they would explicitly reject such a model. I'm not sure that's true, but I'm not sure it's false either; certainly I find myself doing that sometimes when I don't pay attention. I don't think that's sufficient justification to declare hedonism a local consensus, but I suppose one could probably make that argument as well.
Eudaimonic hedonism is still a form of hedonism.
(EDIT: Specifically it's epicurian as compared to cyrenaic.)
That seems entirely wrong. In fact, I think "eudaimonic hedonism" is just a contradiction in terms. Normally eudaimonic well-being is contrasted with hedonistic well-being.
ETA: Maybe you were thinking, "Eudaimonist utlitiarianism is still a form of utilitarianism"?
I see. Then you do not mean that
is the consensus view here at LW. Since after all, the consensus view here is that wireheading is a bad idea.
Eudaimonic pleasure -- happiness -- is of a nature that wireheading would not qualify as valid happiness/pleasure. It would be like 'empty calories'; tasty but unfulfilling.
So no, I do not not mean that 'pleasure is the "measure of utility"' is the mainstream consensus view on LessWrong. I do mean that, and I believe it to be so. "Hedons" and "utilons" are used interchangeably here.
So you do not mean that LWers hold that pleasure (by which I mean the standard definition) is the measure of utility, and that these people would wirehead and are therefore wrong.
My answer to this would be that happiness doesn't necessarily have any value outside of human brains. But that doesn't matter. For most people, it's one of those facets of life that is so basic, so integrated into everything, that it's impossible not to base a lot of decisions on "what makes me happy." (And variants: what makes me satisfied with myself, what makes me able to be proud of myself...I would consider these metrics to be happiness-based even if they don't measure just pleasure in the moment.)
You can try to make general unified theories about what should be true, but in the end, what is true is that human brains experience a state called happiness, and it's a state most people like and want, and that doesn't change no matter what your theory is.
Thanks for the link. Of course I should have checked that....
I'd like to point out that you find this in the second paragraph: "For an eudaemonist, happiness has intrinsic value"
Given the rest of what you've said, and my attachment to happiness as self-evidently valuable, a broader conception of "happiness" (as in eudamonia above) may avoid adverse outcomes like wireheading (assuming it is one). As other commenters here have noted there is no single definition anyway. You might say the broader it becomes, the less useful. Sure, but any measure would probably have to be really broad--like "utility". When I said I don't think 'intrinsic worth' is a thing, it's because I was identifying it with utility, and... I guess I wasn't thinking of (overall) utility as a 'thing' because to me, the concept is really vague and I just think of it an aggregate. An aggregate of things like happiness that contribute to utility.
I mentioned how if you're going to call anything a terminal value, happiness seems like a good one. Now I don't think so: you seem to be saying that you shouldn't (edit: aren't justified in considering) anything a terminal value other than utility itself, which seems reasonable. Is that right?
More to the point:
I'm not sure; it now seems to me it oughtn't to. Maybe another Less Wronger can contribute more, though not me.
I'm just done. (I think I'm being stupid above.) Thanks.