Oops, just when I thought I had the terminology down. :( Yeah, I still think terminal values are arbitrary, in the sense that we choose what we want to live for.
So you think our preference is, by default, the happiness mind-state, and our terminal values may or may not be the most efficient personal happiness-increasers. Don't you wonder why a rational human being would choose terminal goals that aren't? But we sometimes do. Remember your honesty in saying:
Regarding my happiness, I think I may be lying to myself though. I think I rationalize that the same logic applies, that if I achieve some huge ambition there'd be a proportional increase in happiness. Because my brain likes to think achieving ambition -> goodness and I care about how much goodness gets achieved. But if I'm to be honest, that probably isn't true.
I have an idea. So based on biology and evolution, it seems like a fair assumption that humans naturally put ourselves first, all the time. But is it at all possible for humans to have evolved some small, pure, genuine concern for others (call it altruism/morality/love) that coexists with our innate selfishness? Like one human was born with an "altruism mutation" and other humans realized he was nice to have around, so he survived, and the gene is still working its way through society, shifting our preference ratios? It's a pleasant thought, anyway.
But honestly, I literally didn't even know what evolution was until several weeks ago though, so I don't really belong bringing up any science at all yet; let me switch back to personal experience and thought experiments.
For example, let's say my preferences are 98% affected by selfishness and maybe 2% by altruism, since I'm very stingy with my time but less so with my money. (Someone who would die for someone else would have different numbers.) Anyway, on the surface I might look more altruistic because there is a LOT of overlap between decisions that are good for others and decisions that make me feel good. Or, you could see the giant overlap and assume I'm 100% selfish. When I donate to effective charities, I do receive benefits like liking myself a bit more, real or perceived respect from the world, a small burst of fuzzy feelings, and a decrease in the (admittedly small) amount of personal guilt I feel about the world's unfairness. But if I had to put a monetary value on the happiness return from a $1000 donation, it would be less than $1000. When I use a preference ratio and prefer other people's happiness, their happiness does make me happy, but there isn't a direct correlation between how happy it makes me and the extent to which I prefer it. So maybe preference ratios can be based mostly on happiness, but are sometimes tainted with a hint of genuine altruism?
Also, what about diminishing marginal returns with donating? Will someone even feel a noticable increase in good feelings/happiness/satisfaction giving 18% rather than 17%? Or could someone who earns 100k purchase equal happiness with just 17k and be free to spend the extra 1k on extra happiness in the form of ski trips or berries or something (unless he was the type to never eat in restaurants)? Edit: nevermind this paragraph, even if it's realistic, it's just scope insensitivity, right?
But similarly, let's say someone gives 12% of her income. Her personal happiness would probably be higher giving 10% to AMF and distributing 2% in person via random acts of kindness than it would giving all 12% to AMF. Maybe, you're thinking that this difference would affect her mind-state, that she wouldn't be able to think of himself as such a rational person if she did that. But who really values their self-image of being a rational opportunity-cost analyzer that highly? I sure don't (well, 99.99% sure anyway).
Sooo could real altruism exist in some people and affect their preference ratios just like personal happiness does, but to a much smaller extent? Look at (1) your quote about your ambition (2) my desire to donate despite my firm belief that the happiness opportunity cost outweighs the happiness benefits (3) people who are willing to die for others and terminate their own happiness (4) people who choose to donate via effective altruism rather than random acts of kindness
Anyway, if there was an altruism mutation somewhere along the way, and altruism could shape our preferences like happiness, it would be a bit easier to understand the seeming discrepancy between preferences and terminal goals, between likes and wants. Here I will throw out a fancy new rationalist term I learned, and you can tell me if I misunderstand it or am wrong to think it might apply here... occam's razor?
Anyway, in case this idea is all silly and confused, and altruism is a socially conditioned emotion, I'll attempt to find its origin. Not from giving to church (it was only fair that the pastors/teachers/missionaries get their salaries and the members help pay for building costs, electricity, etc). I guess there was the whole "we love because He first loved us" idea, which I knew well and regurgitated often, but don't think I ever truly internalized. I consciously knew I'd still care about others just as much without my faith. Growing up, I knew no one who donated to secular charity, or at least no one who talked about it. The only thing I knew that came close to resembling large-scale altruism was when people chose to be pastors and teachers instead of pursuing high-income careers, but if they did it simply to "follow God's will" I'm not sure it still counts as genuinely caring about others more than yourself. On a small-scale, my mom was really altruistic, like willing to give us her entire portion of an especially tasty food, offer us her jacket when she was cold too, etc... and I know she wasn't calculating cost-benefit ratios, haha. So I guess she could have instilled it in me? Or maybe I read some novels with altruistic values? Idk, any other ideas?
I still don't understand what Eliezer would say to someone that said, "Preferences are selfish and Goals are arbitrary".
I'm no Eliezer, but here's what I would say: Preferences are mostly selfish but can be affected by altruism, and goals are somehow based on these preferences. Whether or not you call them arbitrary probably depends on how you feel about free will. We make decisions. Do our internal mental states drive these decisions? Put in the same position 100 times, with the same internal mental state, would someone make the same decision every time, or would it be 50-50? We don't know, but either way, we still feel like we make decisions (well, except when it comes to belief, in my experience anyway) so it doesn't really matter too much.
The way I'm (operationally) defining Preferences and words like happy/utility, Preferences are by definition what provides us what the most happiness/utility. Consider this thought experiment:
...You start off as a blank slate and your memory is wiped. You then are experience some emotion, and you experience this emotion to a certain magnitude. Let's call this "emotion-magnitude A".
You then experience a second emotion-magnitude - emotion-magnitude B. Now that you have experienced two emotion-magnitudes, you could compare them and say which one was
This was originally a comment to VipulNaik's recent indagations about the academic lifestyle versus the job lifestyle. Instead of calling it lifestyle he called them career options, but I'm taking a different emphasis here on purpose.
Due to information hazards risks, I recommend that Effective Altruists who are still wavering back and forth do not read this. Spoiler EA alert.
I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here.
To have a job and work in the US is taken as a *de facto* biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating. It just doesn't cross people's minds.
If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years.
So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing. That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country.
Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around South America for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff.
Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aproximatelly 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did. Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500.
Oh, I forgot to mention that though it certainly makes you unable to do expensive stuff, thus removing the paradox of choice and part of your existential angst from you (uhuu less choices!), there is nearly no detraction in status from not having a job. In fact, during these years in which I was either being an EA and directing an NGO, or studying on my own, or doing a Masters (which, let's agree is not very time consuming) my status has increased steadily, and many opportunities would have been lost if I had a job that wouldn't let me move freely. Things like being invited as Visiting Scholar to Singularity Institute, like giving a TED talk, like directing IERFH, and like spending a month working at FHI with Bostrom, Sandberg, and the classic Lesswrong poster Stuart Armstrong.
So when thinking about what to do with you future my dear fellow Americans, please, at least consider not getting a job. At least admit what everyone knows from the bottom of their hearts, that jobs are abundant for high IQ people (specially you my programmer lurker readers.... I know you are there...and you native English speakers, I can see you there, unnecessarily worrying about your earning potential).
A job is truly an instrumental goal, and your terminal goals certainly do have chains of causation leading to them that do not contain a job for 330 days a year. Unless you are a workaholic who experiences flow in virtue of pursuing instrumental goals. Then please, work all day long, donate as much as you can, and may your life be awesome!