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Lumifer comments on A discussion of heroic responsibility - Less Wrong
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Is there an implication that someone or something does know? That strikes me as awfully paternalistic.
It's a statement of fact, not a political agenda. Neuroscientists know more about people's brains than normal people do, as a result of spending years and decades studying the subject.
Huh? Neuroscientists know my terminal values better than I do because they studied brains?
Sorry, that's nonsense.
Not yours specifically, but the general average across humanity. lukeprog wrote up a good summary of the factors correlated with happiness which you've probably read as well as an attempt to discern the causes. Not that happiness is the be-all and end-all of terminal values, but it certainly shows how little the average person knows about what they would actually happy with vs what they think they'd be happy with. I believe that small sub-sequence on the science of winning at life is far more than the average person knows on the subject, or else people wouldn't give such terrible advice.
Aren't you making the assumption that the average applies to everyone? It does not. There is a rather wide spread and pretending that a single average value represents it well enough is unwarranted.
There are certainly things biologically hardwired into human brains but not all of them are terminal values and for things that are (e.g. survival) you don't need a neurobiologist to point that out. Frankly, I am at loss to see what neurobiologists can say about terminal values. It's like asking Intel chip engineers about what a piece of software really does.
I don't know about that. Do you have evidence? If a person's ideas about her happiness diverge from the average ones, I would by default assume that she's different from the average, not that she is wrong.