For reference:
But I don't want to admit my preference ratios are that far out of whack; I don't want to be that selfish.
Why?
I think that exploring and answering that question will be helpful.
Try thinking about it in two ways:
1) A rational analysis of what you genuinely think makes sense. Note that rational does not mean completely logically.
2) An emotional analysis of what you feel, why you feel it, and in the event that your feelings aren't accurate, how can you nudge them to be more accurate.
You:
I want to answer this question with "because emotion!" Is this allowed?
Also:
Analyze emotion?? Can you do that?! As an istp, just identifying emotion is difficult enough.
Absolutely! That's how I'd start off. But the question I was getting at is "why does your brain produce those emotions". What is the evolutionary psychology behind it? What events in your life have conditioned you to produce this emotion?
By default, I think it's natural to give a lot of weight to your emotions and be driven by them. But once you really understand where they come from, I think it's easier to give them a more appropriate weight, and consequently, to better achieve your goals. (1,2,3)
And you could manipulate your emotions too. Examples: You'll be less motivated to go to the gym if you lay down on the couch. You'll be more motivated to go to the gym if you tell your friends that you plan on going to the gym every day for a month.
So I think that based solely on my intuition here, I might disagree with you and find personal happiness and altruism to be two separate terminal goals, often harmonious but sometimes conflicting.
So you don't think terminal goals are arbitrary? Or are you just proclaiming what yours are?
Edit:
But honestly I rarely think about it, and I'm 99.99% sure the overall impact on my happiness is much smaller than if I were to use the money to fly to Guatemala and take a few weeks' vacation to visit old friends. Yet, even as I acknowledge this, I still want to donate. I don't know why.
Are you sure that this has nothing to do with maximizing happiness? Perhaps the reason why you still want to donate is to preserve an image you have of yourself, which presumably is ultimately about maximizing your happiness.
(Below is a thought that ended up being a dead end. I was going to delete it, but then I figured you might still be interested in reading it.)
Also, an interesting thought occurred to me related to wanting vs. liking. Take a person who starts off with only the terminal goal of maximizing his happiness. Imagine that the person then develops an addiction, say to smoking. And imagine that the person doesn't actually like smoking, but still wants to smoke. Ie. smoking does not maximize his happiness, but he still wants to do it. Should he then decide that smoking is a terminal goal of his?
I'm not trying to say that smoking is a bad terminal goal, because I think terminal goals are arbitrary. What I am trying to say is that... he seems to be actually trying to maximize his happiness, but just failing at it.
DEAD END. That's not true. Maybe he is actually trying to maximize his happiness, maybe he isn't. You can't say whether he is or he isn't. If he is, then it leads you to say "Well if your terminal goal is ultimately to maximize your happiness... then you should try to maximize your happiness (if you want to achieve your terminal goals)." But if he isn't (just) trying to maximize happiness, he could add in whatever other terminal goals he wants. Deep down I still notice a bit of confusion regarding my conclusion that goals are arbitrary, and so I find myself trying to argue against it. But every time I do I end up reaching a dead end :/
Anyway, I went back through the book and found the title of the post. It's Terminal Values and Instrumental Values. You can jump to "Consider the philosopher."
Thank you! That does seem to be a/the key point in his article. Although "I value the choice" seems like a weird argument to me. I never thought of it as a potential counter argument. From what I can gather from Eliezer's cryptic rebuttal, I agree with him.
I still don't understand what Eliezer would say to someone that said, "Preferences are selfish and Goals are arbitrary".
1- Which isn't to imply that I'm good at this. Just that I sense that it's true and I've had isolated instances of success with it.
2 - And again, this isn't to imply that you shouldn't give emotions any weight and be a robot. I used to be uncomfortable with just an "intuitive sense" and not really understanding the reasoning behind it. Reading How We Decide changed that for me. 1) It really hit me that there is "reasoning" behind the intuitions and emotions you feel. Ie. your brain does some unconscious processing. 2) It hit me that I need to treat these feelings as Bayesian evidence and consider how likely it is that I have that intuition when the intuition is wrong vs. how likely it is that I have the intuition when the intuition is right.
3 - This all feels very "trying-to-be-wise-sounding", which I hate. But I don't know how else to say it.
Oops, just when I thought I had the terminology down. :( Yeah, I still think terminal values are arbitrary, in the sense that we choose what we want to live for.
So you think our preference is, by default, the happiness mind-state, and our terminal values may or may not be the most efficient personal happiness-increasers. Don't you wonder why a rational human being would choose terminal goals that aren't? But we sometimes do. Remember your honesty in saying:
...Regarding my happiness, I think I may be lying to myself though. I think I rationalize that the sa
This was originally a comment to VipulNaik's recent indagations about the academic lifestyle versus the job lifestyle. Instead of calling it lifestyle he called them career options, but I'm taking a different emphasis here on purpose.
Due to information hazards risks, I recommend that Effective Altruists who are still wavering back and forth do not read this. Spoiler EA alert.
I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here.
To have a job and work in the US is taken as a *de facto* biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating. It just doesn't cross people's minds.
If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years.
So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing. That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country.
Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around South America for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff.
Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aproximatelly 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did. Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500.
Oh, I forgot to mention that though it certainly makes you unable to do expensive stuff, thus removing the paradox of choice and part of your existential angst from you (uhuu less choices!), there is nearly no detraction in status from not having a job. In fact, during these years in which I was either being an EA and directing an NGO, or studying on my own, or doing a Masters (which, let's agree is not very time consuming) my status has increased steadily, and many opportunities would have been lost if I had a job that wouldn't let me move freely. Things like being invited as Visiting Scholar to Singularity Institute, like giving a TED talk, like directing IERFH, and like spending a month working at FHI with Bostrom, Sandberg, and the classic Lesswrong poster Stuart Armstrong.
So when thinking about what to do with you future my dear fellow Americans, please, at least consider not getting a job. At least admit what everyone knows from the bottom of their hearts, that jobs are abundant for high IQ people (specially you my programmer lurker readers.... I know you are there...and you native English speakers, I can see you there, unnecessarily worrying about your earning potential).
A job is truly an instrumental goal, and your terminal goals certainly do have chains of causation leading to them that do not contain a job for 330 days a year. Unless you are a workaholic who experiences flow in virtue of pursuing instrumental goals. Then please, work all day long, donate as much as you can, and may your life be awesome!