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wedrifid comments on Utilitarians probably wasting time on recreation - Less Wrong Discussion
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Sounds like donating to the AMF would be valuable for the specific individuals who would get mozzie nets and less valuable to me. The extent to which other people choose to value dontations to the third world relative to their own interests is frankly none of your business. This isn't a fundamentalist utilitarian cult where we get to admonish each other for not being optimized perfect altruists. (Or to otherwise make presumptions on other people's terminal values.)
wedrifid, to the extent that your terminal values affect your actions and hence the effect of your actions on the value of my utility function, they are my business (in the same sense that your religion is my business). I generally won't be an asshole about it, but for instance the extent to which I care about helping you achieve your goals probably depends on the extent to which I think those goals line up with mine.
(FWIW, I'm definitely not a perfect altruist either.)
Of course they are your business in the sense that knowledge about my utility function alters your game theoretic incentives when it comes to dealing with me. When it comes down to it you may need to throw down and use social or physical force against me. And yet it remains the case that telling me what my preferences are (in any sense except an assertion that I incorrectly model myself) is a straightforward intellectual error.
In most social environments that aren't cults it is also considered rather rude to tell other people what their preferences are. If you violate my personal conceptual territory by telling me what I do, or must, intrinsically value then you can should expect to be told to <censored/> because you are being a <censored/>. It is (if done particularly aggressively) a rather degrading act, somewhat along the lines of 'objectification' - it acts to remove the recipients independent identity and relevance as an agent of personal social-political relevance.
When playing chess and I capture your queen in such a way as I guarantee that I can achieve checkmate in 7 it is ridiculous to tell me that I have just made a bad move. I can be assumed* to be implicitly valuing winning the chess game. It takes a rather esoteric reinterpretation of language to say that I am making a bad move due to it not being a move that achieves your goals. It would just mean that you would have to invent new words for the purpose of communicating with others.
* Barring exceptional external circumstances. I recall, for example, a (cricket) World Cup wherein it was in Australia's best interest to lose a particular game in order to be in a better place to win the series.
Please explain what you mean by this. What is "my business" and what isn't "my business", and what makes it that way? "None of your business" seems like a label you've made up for "Things I don't want you to question me on".
Among other things, I'm saying that telling people (or aggressively making assumptions about) what their terminal values must be is an error that is intellectual and/or social in nature. That is what this post does.
Really? I don't think you are being reasonable. I didn't make up the label for a start. I was speaking colloquial English.
The majority of discussion on LW is at least intellectual in nature and often social in nature as well.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt I assume you are responding to an edit where I left out a word in there somewhere? The current comment is:
Ah, yes. That would make more sense. I was very confused. :-) Thanks for responding, or I wouldn't have noticed you edited it and would have just looked like a buffoon.
You didn't make up the label, certainly. You're right, I shouldn't have said that. But that is what I interpret that label as, as it is used in colloquial English. I don't at all disagree with your point, "none of your business" is just defensive language that I find that people use when they don't want to justify something that they have no justification for.
It is something people use when people ask for information that they do not have a right to have, asked for justifications that the recipient should not be expected to give or give advice or make demands that they do not have the power or right to make. In many cases responding with a justification instead of "none of your business" or an equivalent rejection is a social mistake that just encourages more dominance displays and boundaryless behavior on the part of whoever is making the presumption.
My experience is otherwise. But if that's how you meant it, fair.