gjm comments on On Terminal Goals and Virtue Ethics - Less Wrong

67 Post author: Swimmer963 18 June 2014 04:00AM

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Comment author: TheAncientGeek 19 June 2014 12:32:32PM -2 points [-]

There's no incoherence in defining "terminal" as "not lowest priority", which is basically what you are saying.

It just not what the word means.

Literally, etymologically, that is not what terminal means. It means maximal, or final. A terminal illness is not an illness that is a bit more serious than some other illness.

It's not even what it usually means on LW. If Clippies goals were terminal in your sense, they would be overridable .....you would be able to talk Clippie out of papercliiping.

What you are talking about is valid, is a thing. If you have any hierarchy of goals, there are some at the bottom, some in the middle, and some at the top. But you need to invent a new word for the middle ones, because, "terminal" doesn't mean "intermediate".

Comment author: gjm 19 June 2014 10:04:14PM 6 points [-]

OK, that makes the source of disagreement clearer.

I agree that "terminal" means "final" (but not that it means "maximal"; that's a different concept). But it doesn't (to me, and I think to others on LW) mean "final" in the sense I think you have in mind (i.e., so supremely important that once you notice it applies you can stop thinking), but in a different sense (when analysing goals or values, asking "so why do I want X?", this is a point at which you can go no further: "well, I just do").

So we're agreed on the etymology: a "terminal" goal or value is one-than-which-one-can-go-no-further. But you want it to mean "no further in the direction of increasing importance" and I want it to mean "no further in the direction of increasing fundamental-ness". I think the latter usage has at least the following two advantages:

  • It's possible that people actually have quite a lot of goals and values that are "terminal" in this sense, including ones that are directly relevant in motivating them in ordinary situations. (Whereas it's very rare to come across a situation in which some goal you have is so comprehensively overriding that you don't have to think about anything else.)
  • This usage of "terminal" is well established on LW. I think its usage here goes back to Eliezer's post called Terminal Values and Instrumental Values from November 2007. See also the LW wiki entry. This is not a usage I have just invented, and I strongly disagree with your statement that "It's not even what it usually means on LW".

The trouble with Clippy isn't that his paperclip-maximizing goal is terminal, it's that that's his only goal.

I'm not sure whether in your last paragraph you're suggesting that I'm using "terminal" to mean "intermediate in importance", but for the avoidance of doubt I am not doing anything at all like that. There are two separate things here that you could call hierarchies, one in terms of importance and one in terms of explanation, and "terminal" refers (in my usage, which I think is also the LW-usual one) only to the latter.

Comment author: Nornagest 20 June 2014 04:49:50PM *  4 points [-]

We can go a step further, actually: "teminal value" and various synonyms are well-established within philosophy, where they usually carry the familiar LW meaning of "something that has value in itself, not as a means to an end".

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