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Ghatanathoah comments on Desires You're Not Thinking About at the Moment - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think to answer this we need to divide values into categories, which I will call "general" and "specific." A general value would be something like "having friends, having fun, being a good person, etc." A specific value would be something like "being friends with Ted, going to see a movie, volunteering at a soup kitchen, etc." It is a specific manifestation of a more general value.
If someone's specific values change, it is generally because they have found a different specific value that they will believe will fulfill their general values more effectively. For instance my specific value might change from "going to see a movie" to "going for a walk in the park," because I have realized that doing that will fulfill my general value of "having fun" more effectively.
Generally, I think a person's general values are fairly stable, and it is hard to change them without doing something serious to their brain. I think continuing to respect those values, and maybe trying to repair whatever happened to that person's brain, is probably a good idea.
In the case of one's specific values, however, respecting the old specific values after they change would not be a good thing to do, since the reason those values have changed is that the new specific values fulfill a person's general values better. This is, of course, assuming that the person whose specific values have changed is correct that their new specific values fulfill their general values better than their old ones. If they are mistaken it might be better to keep respecting their old specific values.
I think this is related to the concept of CEV. "General desires" are roughly analogous to "volition" while "specific desires" are roughly analogous to "decision."
I think the conceptual distinction you're trying to make is more like terminal vs instrumental goals rather than general vs specific goals, although they may be correlated. I generally think of "values" as synonymous with "terminal goals", and those are what I was referring to. I agree that people's terminal goals change much less often than instrumental goals.
By "something serious", do you mean that you think that a change in terminal goals would require them to become mentally disabled, or just that it would require a fairly substantial change? If the former, then that is a fairly strong claim, which I would like to see evidence for. If the latter, then reversing the change seems cruel to the modified person if they are still functional.
I think probably the latter. But regardless of which it is, I think that anyone would regard such a change as highly undesirable, since it is kind of hard to pursue one's terminal goals if the person you've changing into no longer has the same goals.
You're right of course. It would be similar to if a person died, and the only way to resurrect them would be to kill another still living person. The only situation where it would be desirable would be if the changed person inflicted large disutilities on others, or the original created huge utilities for others. For instance, if a brilliant surgeon who saves dozens of lives per year is changed into a cruel sociopath (the sociopath is capable of functioning perfectly fine in society, they're just evil) who commits horrible crimes, reversing the change would be a no-brainer. But in a more normal situation you are right that it would be cruel.