That's not comparable because the truth-value of "God exists" is a function of reality, whereas the truth-value of "archery is a good hobby" is a function of reality and a utility function.
Believing that God exist is an activity and activities do have utility functions. It also has a lot to do with priors and it makes sense to choose your priors based on a heuristic that you evaluate with an utility function.
Why should it be impossible for a person to have simply too high a discounting rate, which need not be irrational, in order for this whole suffering and personality-changing to be happier in the far future to be worth it?
I'm not arguing that it's theoretically impossible for people to have a high discount rate. Someone at the last lesswrong meetup argued that smoking is rational for him because he doesn't care if he loses 10 years of lifespan.
On the other hand if that's your position answering: "You should take up smoking" when someone asks for a good way to spend his life to improve his life on a lesswrong thread doesn't make any sense without talking at all about the fact that you have a high possibility of temporal discounting.
In particular, someone might value health benefits much less than you do.
That's probably right, but doesn't have much to do with the argument I made. I spoke about health benefits because archery is sort of a sport and the secondary benefit that comes to mind for most sports is health benefits.
It does not mean that I want my perception of beauty to be altered in such a way that I find the things which are, in fact, around me beautiful. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to be in the analogous situation with respect to happiness.
Finding archery fun is quite superficial. It not like valuing saving human lives or preventing the world from being destroyed. I do think that it's quite okay to change around how much happiness things bring that you do for higher purposes.
I do find it strange to value being happy tomorrow but not valuing changing around associations in your mind to be happy tomorrow because engaging in certain activity fulfills a long term purpose. That position seems to me very constructed and I would doubt that many people seriously hold it.
Again if that's your position and you give suggestions on a thread of how a rationalists can improve his life by spending money I do think you have the burden of being explicit about your abnormal utility function. I would also question whether that suggestion has any value for the person who started the thread as I would predict that they value the happiness they have in a year and don't just want to improve how happy they are tomorrow.
And what's that thing about MtG? I never mentioned that...
You brought up me wanting other people to take up Salsa. I did that in the MtG discussion when I said it's probably more exicting. Here I suggest martial arts as substitute for archery.
Believing that God exist is an activity and activities do have utility functions. It also has a lot to do with priors and it makes sense to choose your priors based on a heuristic that you evaluate with an utility function.
Well, okay. But can we at least agree that epistemic activities are special and remove them from the discussion?
I'm not arguing that it's theoretically impossible for people to have a high discount rate.
Right. So you just assuming that it's low enough for your argument to be applicable to them...
...That's probably right, but doesn'
On ChrisHallquist's post extolling the virtues of money, the top comment is Eliezer pointing out the lack of concrete examples. Can anyone think of any? This is not just hypothetical: if I think your suggestion is good, I will try it (and report back on how it went)
I care about health, improving personal skills (particularly: programming, writing, people skills), gaining respect (particularly at work), and entertainment (these days: primarily books and computer games). If you think I should care about something else, feel free to suggest it.
I am early-twenties programmer living in San Francisco. In the interest of getting advice useful to more than one person, I'll omit further personal details.
Budget: $50/day
If your idea requires significant ongoing time commitment, that is a major negative.