Benja comments on Terminal Values and Instrumental Values - Less Wrong

54 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 November 2007 07:56AM

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Comment author: Benja 18 December 2012 01:19:42AM *  2 points [-]

I'm writing to report that the following piece of writing just had a useful teaching effect on me:

If your debating opponent says that banning guns will lead to lower crime, and you say that banning guns lead to higher crime, then you agree about a superior instrumental value (crime is bad), but you disagree about which intermediate events lead to which consequences.

And a few paragraphs later:

If you say that you want to ban guns in order to reduce crime, it may take a moment to realize that "reducing crime" isn't a terminal value, it's a superior instrumental value with links to terminal values for human lives and human happinesses.

When re-reading this post just now (I hadn't read it in a long time), I did wonder "isn't that a typo?" when reading the first of these quotes. I did figure it out for myself, but (and I am embarrassed to admit this) it did take me a moment. I'm hoping the feeling of "ouch" when I did realize will help to make the lesson stick this time around.

I'm not sure whether the effect was intended (my guess is it was), but in any case, perhaps that's a useful data point on this kind of writing.