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Oscar_Cunningham comments on Open thread, September 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Commonly, humans have an amount of empathy that means that when they know about suffering of entities within their circle of interest, they also suffer. EG, I can feel sad because my friend is sad. Some people have really vast circles, and feel sad when they think about animals suffering.
Do you understand suffering yourself? If so, presumably when you suffer you act to reduce it, by not holding your hand in a fire or whatnot? Working to end suffering of others can end your own empathic suffering.
I don't help people because of empathy for them. I just want to help them. It's a terminal value for me that other people be happy. I do feel empathy, but that's not why I help people.
Your utility function needn't be your own personal happiness! It can be anything you want!
No it can't. You don't get to choose your utility function.
But anyway I was responding to rationalnoodles as someone who clearly doesn't seem to understand wanting to help people.
My point was that you should never feel constrained by your utility function. You should never feel like it's telling you to do something that isn't what you want. But if you thought that utility=happiness then you might very well end up feeling this way.
That's fair. I think a better way to put it is to not put too much value into any explicit attempt to state your own utility function?
Yeah.
Are you implying that utility functions don't change or that they do, but you can't take actions that will make it more likely to change in a given direction, or something else?
More that any decision you make about trying to change your utility function is not "choosing a utility function" but is actually just your current utility function expressing itself.