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hyporational comments on Rational subjects and rational practitioners - Less Wrong
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When I discuss politics or morality with my friends (none of them are rationalists), it seems the most frequent problem is them confusing instrumental with terminal values. Since terminal values are subjective and it feels you have direct knowledge of them, values can be defended with unfaltering certainty as long as you think they are terminal. I have a faint memory of Eliezer specificly discussing this problem, maybe even on several occasions, so if someone can refer me to the posts, I am grateful.
Edit: this briefly discusses it, are there any others?
Maybe they just have different values than you do? Could you give an example?
Thanks for asking this question, I falsely believed my conclusions were obvious. Looked a long time for a satisfying answer and found none. I don't believe that the instrumental-terminal distinction is useful for human beings most of the time anymore, especially because we're really prone to this.
The problem of the instrumental-terminal distinction is that it ignores important aspects of human decision making.
I recommend a paper titled Emerging sacred values: Iran’s nuclear program in the journal Judgment and Decision Making. It's about the willingness of the Iranian to give up the right to a peaceful nuclear program.
It explain that human hold sacred as well as secular values. Sacred values aren't only existing within religion. The Iranian belief in Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program also is a sacred value.
In Western culture a lot of people treat equality and democracy as sacred values. Many people who self label as skeptics treat principles like the scientific method or the theory of evolution as sacred values.