So maybe preference ratios can be based mostly on happiness, but are sometimes tainted with a hint of genuine altruism?
The way I'm defining preference ratios:
Preference ratio for person X = how much you care about yourself / how much you care about person X
Or, more formally, how many units of utility person X would have to get before you'd be willing to sacrificing one unit of your own utility for him/her.
So what does altruism mean? Does it mean "I don't need to gain any happiness in order for me to want to help you, but I don't know if I'd help you if it caused me unhappiness."? Or does it mean "I want to help you regardless of how it impacts my happiness. I'd go to hell if it meant you got one extra dollar."
[When I was studying for some vocab test in middle school my cards were in alphabetical order at one point and I remember repeating a thousand times - "altruism: selfless concern for others. altruism: selfless concern for others. altruism: selfless concern for others...". That definition would imply the latter.]
Let's take the former definition. In that case, you'd want person X to get one unit of utility even if you get nothing in return, so your preference ratio would be 0. But this doesn't necessarily work in reverse. Ie. in order to save person X from losing one unit of utility, you probably wouldn't sacrifice a bajillion units of your own utility. I very well might be confusing myself with the math here.
Note: I've been trying to think about this but my approach is too simplistic and I've been countering it, but I'm having trouble articulating it. If you really want me to I could try, otherwise I don't think it's worth it. Sometimes I find math to be really obvious and useful, and sometimes I find it to be the exact opposite.
Also, what about diminishing marginal returns with donating?
This depends on the person, but I think that everyone experiences it to some extent.
Will someone even feel a noticable increase in good feelings/happiness/satisfaction giving 18% rather than 17%? Or could someone who earns 100k purchase equal happiness with just 17k and be free to spend the extra 1k on extra happiness in the form of ski trips or berries or something (unless he was the type to never eat in restaurants)? Edit: nevermind this paragraph, even if it's realistic, it's just scope insensitivity, right?
If the person is trying to maximize happiness, the question is just "how much happiness would a marginal 1k donation bring" vs. "how much happiness would a 1k vacation bring". The answers to these questions depend on the person.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The person might be scope insensitive to how much impact the 1k could have if he donated it.
But similarly, let's say someone gives 12% of her income. Her personal happiness would probably be higher giving 10% to AMF and distributing 2% in person via random acts of kindness than it would giving all 12% to AMF.
Yes, the optimal donation strategy for maximizing your own happiness is different from the one that maximizes impact :)
Sooo could real altruism exist in some people and affect their preference ratios just like personal happiness does, but to a much smaller extent? Look at (1) your quote about your ambition (2) my desire to donate despite my firm belief that the happiness opportunity cost outweighs the happiness benefits (3) people who are willing to die for others and terminate their own happiness (4) people who choose to donate via effective altruism rather than random acts of kindness
2, 3 and 4 are examples of people not trying to maximize their happiness.
1 is me sometimes knowingly following an impulse my brain produces even when I know it doesn't maximize my happiness. Sadly, this happens all the time. For example, I ate Chinese food today, and I don't think that doing so would maximize my long-term happiness.
In the case of my ambitions, my brain produces impulses/motivations stemming from things including:
Brains don't produce impulses in perfect, or even good alignment with what it expects will maximize utility. I find the decision to eat fast food as an intuitive example of this. But I don't see how this changes anything about Preferences or Goals.
Anyway, if there was an altruism mutation somewhere along the way, and altruism could shape our preferences like happiness, it would be a bit easier to understand the seeming discrepancy between preferences and terminal goals, between likes and wants. Here I will throw out a fancy new rationalist term I learned, and you can tell me if I misunderstand it or am wrong to think it might apply here... occam's razor?
I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand what you're saying but I think I'm failing. I think the problem is that I'm defining words differently than you. I'm trying to figure out how you're defining them, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I think that if we clarify our definitions, we'd be able to make some good progress.
altruism could shape our preferences like happiness
The way I'm thinking about it... think back to my operational definition of preferences in the first comment where I talk about how an action leads to a mind-state. What action leads to what mind-state depends on the person. An altruistic action for you might lead to a happy mind-state, and that same action might lead me to a neutral mind-state. So in that sense altruism definitely shapes our preferences.
I'm not sure if you're implying this, but I don't see how this changes the fact that you could choose to strive for any goal you want. That you could only say that a means is good at leading to an end. That you can't say that and end is good.
Ie. I could chose the goal of killing people, and you can't say that it's a bad goal. You could only say that it's bad at leading to a happy society. Or that it's bad at making me happy.
Here I will throw out a fancy new rationalist term I learned, and you can tell me if I misunderstand it or am wrong to think it might apply here... occam's razor?
That's a term that I don't think I have a proper understanding of. There was a point when I realized that it just means that A & B is always less likely than A, unless B = 1. Like let's say that the probability of A is .75. Even if B is .999999, P(A & B) < P(A). And so in that sense, simpler = better.
But people use it in ways that I don't really understand. Ie. sometimes I don't get what they mean by simpler. I don't see that the term applies here though.
Anyway, in case this idea is all silly and confused, and altruism is a socially conditioned emotion
I think it'd be helpful if you defined specifically what you mean by altruism. I mean, you don't have to be all formal or anything, but more specific would be useful.
As far as socially conditioned emotions goes, our emotions are socially conditioned to be happy in response to altruistic things and sad in response to anti-altruistic things. I wouldn't say that that makes altruism itself a socially conditioned emotion.
Do our internal mental states drive these decisions? Put in the same position 100 times, with the same internal mental state, would someone make the same decision every time, or would it be 50-50?
Wow, that's a great way to put it! You definitely have the head of a scientist :)
We don't know, but either way, we still feel like we make decisions (well, except when it comes to belief, in my experience anyway) so it doesn't really matter too much.
Yeah, I pretty much feel that way too.
Yeah, this has gotten a little too tangled up in definitions. Let's try again, but from the same starting point.
Happiness=preferred mind-state (similar, potentially interchangeable terms: satisfaction, pleasure) Goodness=what leads to a happier outcome for others (similar, potentially interchangeable terms: morality, altruism)
I guess my whole idea is that goodness is kind of special. Most people seem born with it, to one extent or another. I think happiness and goodness are the two ultimate motivators. I even think they're the only two ultimate motivators....
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!