Few people make that many conscious decisions!
Indeed.
But it could be a subconscious decision that still fulfills the goal.
True. In the case of my friend, I don't think it was, but in cases where it is, then I think that it could be a perfectly sensible approach (depending on the situation).
This was the relevant part of the conversation:
So what if it were the situation was: tell the truth and make you less happy, your family less happy, and the rest of the world unaffected, or lie.
i would never approach it that way. my decisions aren't that calculated (at least not consciously).
It's possible that he had legitimately decided earlier to not put that much calculation into these sorts of decisions, because he thinks that this strategy will best lead to his terminal goals of happiness or goodness or whatever. But this situation actually didn't involve any calculation at all. The calculations were done for him already - he just had to choose between the results.
To me it seems more likely that he a) is not at all used to making cost-benefit analyses and makes his decisions by listening to his impressions of how virtuous things seem. And b) in situations of choosing between options that both produce unpleasant feelings of unvirtuousness, he flinches away from the reality of the (hypothetical) situation.
I should mention that I think that >99% of people are quite quite stupid. Most people don't seem very agenty to me, given the way I define it. Most people seem to not put much thought behind the overwhelming majority of what they do and think and instead just respond to their immediate feelings and rationalize it afterwards. Most people don't seem to have the open-mindedness to give consideration to ideas that go against their impulses (this isn't to say that these impulses are useless), nor the strength to admit hard truths and choose an option in a lose-lose scenario.
Really, I don't know how to word my thoughts very well on this topic. Eliezer addresses a lot of the mistakes people make in his articles. It'd take some time for me to really write up my thoughts on this. And I know that it makes me sound like a Bad Person for thinking that >99% people are really stupid, but unfortunate truths have to be dealt with. The following isn't a particularly good argument, but perhaps it's an intuitive one: consider how we think people 200 years ago were stupid, and people 200 years ago think people 400 years ago were stupid etc. (I don't think this means that everyone will always be stupid. Ie. I think that not being stupid means something in an absolute sense, not just a relative one).
It's exactly like that, just multiplied times infinity (adjusted for scope insensitivity) because hell is eternal.
I'm truly truly sorry that you had experienced this. No one should ever have to feel that. If there's anything I could do or say to help, please let me know.
If you're really curious, how convenient, I wrote about it here to explain myself to my Christian friends.
I had actually seen the link when I looked back at your first post in the welcome thread at some point. I confess that I just skimmed it briefly and didn't pick up on the core idea. However, I've just read it more carefully.
I love your literary device. The Banana Tree thought experiment and analogy that is (I don't actually know what I literary device is). And the fact that people believe that - a) God is caring, AND b) God created Hell and set the circumstances up where millions/billions of people will end up there - is... let's just say inconsistent by any reasonable definition of the words consistent, caring and suffering.
In the same way that you talk about how God is bad for creating Hell, I actually think something similar about life itself. I'm a bit pessimistic. The happiness set point theory says that we have happiness set points and that we may temporarily deviate above or below them, but that we end up hovering back to our set points.
Furthermore, this set point seems to be quite neutral and quite consistent amongst humans. What I mean by neutral is that minute-to-minute, most people seem to be in a "chill" state of mind, not really happy or sad. And we don't spend too much time deviating from that. And there's also the reality that we're all destined to die. Why does life have to be mediocre? Why can't it be great? Why do we all have to get sick and die? I don't know how or if reality was "created", but to anthropomorphize, why did the creator make it like this? From the perspective of pre-origin-of-reality (if that's even a thing), I feel the same feelings about neutralness that you expressed about the badness of Hell (but obviously Hell is far worse than neutralness). From a pre-origin perspective, reality could just as easily have been amazing and wonderful, so the fact that it's neutral and fleeting seems... disappointing?
But how did I survive, believing in hell? Well, there's this wonderful book of the Bible called Ecclesiastes that seems to mostly contradict the rest of Christian teachings. Most people find depressing. Personally, I loved it and read it every week to comfort myself. I still like it, actually. It's short, you could read it in no time, but here's a sample from chapter 3: 18-22:
If it got you through believing in hell, I will most certainly read it.
To me it seems more likely that he a) is not at all used to making cost-benefit analyses and makes his decisions by listening to his impressions of how virtuous things seem. And b) in situations of choosing between options that both produce unpleasant feelings of unvirtuousness, he flinches away from the reality of the (hypothetical) situation.
So a possible distinction between virtue ethicists and consequentialists: virtue ethicists pursue their terminal values of happiness and goodness subconsciously, while consequentialists pursue the same terminal va...
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!