Do you hold the same position about aesthetic preferences? Because frankly, trying to change your aesthetic preferences to fit your surroundings, instead of the other way around, strikes me as bizarre.

As far as aesthetic preferences go, learning to appreciate the subtleties of high culture isn't something that's generally considered bizarre. Yes, you can enjoy pop culture but I do think that changing your aesthetics by learning to perceive fine details is worthwhile.

I'm not a high culture snob you listens all the time to classical music that the average person can't appreciate because they didn't develop the required qualia. You can probably guess the reason ;) I do have a project running to develop finer ability to distinguish colors and that's likely to change my aesthetics. I do think that developing finer qualia to perceive more depth of reality is worthwhile.

As a programmer I do want to develop aesthetics that make me shun bad code that's likely to produce bugs. I think that if you want to hold on to the aesthetics of a beginner programmer that will hold you back in developing your programming ability.

The same goes for most expert domains. Developing good aesthetics for a field can be very worthwhile. Physicists distinguish beautiful theories from one's that aren't and developing the aesthetics to make that judgement will take time.

I strive to increase information inflow by being able to perceive finer distinctions of reality and I strive to develop aesthetics that make me more effective in the fields I want to have expertise.

It is superficial, and I'm not suggesting that anybody would have performing archery as an actual terminal value. The terminal value may be closer to "do something cool by my present definition of cool"

For me that would still be a pretty superficial goal. But if we would look at that definition we could have a least a decent discussion whether archery optimizes that goal or whether there another hobby that would be more cool given that definition.

I think that something like life purpose is the core thing towards which to optimize.

Also, what's your basis for the assertion that the general structure of my utility function is so abnormal?

I think most people would agree that investing burrow money with 20% interest rate to enjoy an experience in the present when you have to pay it back in a year is a bad way to discount future utility.

Do you see people going around trying to change themselves to find things okay that they don't find okay, instead of trying to change those things?

That sentence is quite complicated to answer. Trying to change yourself is the opposite from changing yourself. In reality quite a lot of people do adept to their circumstances. If you look at politics a lot of democrats suddenly find policies that they rejected under Bush to be okay, now that Obama implements them.

The thing I advocate is being clear about your purpose in life and then making the adaptions consciously instead of just letting them happen randomly.

Trying to change things is an activity in which a lot of people engage. It's generally a bad habit. Either you change things or you don't.

Also, we're not talking about it being okay to change your happiness function - we're talking about whether it's essentially obligatory, which you seem to be asserting.

I do think that it's quite supoptimal to have a happiness function that makes you unhappy if you engage in the activities that are best for you. I'm not saying that you have to modify it in a way to feel bad if you don't engage in the activities that are best for you.

Feeling unhappy when you do what's right just feels unnecessary. I would recommend to everyone to be happy over being depressed all things equal.