Open thread, Jan. 19 - Jan. 25, 2015

Gondolinian

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I have a slate of questions that I often ask people to try and better understand them. Recently I realized that one of these questions may not be as open-ended as I'd thought, in the sense that it may actually have a proper answer according to Bayesian rationality. Though, I remain uncertain about this. The question is actually quite simple and so I offer it to the Less Wrong community to see what kind of answers people can come up with, as well as what the majority of Less Wrongers think. If you'd rather you can private message me your answer.

The question is:

Truth or Happiness? If you had to choose between one or the other, which would you pick?

Truth is a tool. If it can't be used to fulfill my goal of happiness, what good is it? That being said, if you just meant my happiness, then I'd take truth and use it to increase net happiness.

0Aleksander11y

Hey it's a good question. I'd pick Happiness. When I was much younger I might have said Truth. I was a student of physics once and loved to repeat the quote that the end of man is knowledge. But since then I have been happy, and I have been unhappy, and the difference between the two is just too large.

2Adam Zerner11y

Great question! I'm glad you brought it up! Personally, it's a bit of an ugh field for me. And is something I'm confused about, and really wish I had a good answer to. To me, this get's at a more general question of, "what should your terminal values be?". It is my understanding that rationality can help you to achieve terminal values, but not to select them. I've thought about it a lot and have tried to think of a reason why one terminal value is "better" or "more rational" than another... but I've pretty much failed. I keep arriving at the conclusion that "what should your terminal values be?" is a Wrong Question, which becomes pretty obvious once it's dissolved. But at the same time... it's such an important question that the slightest bit of uncertainty really bothers me. Think of it in terms of expected value - a huge magnitude multiplied by a small probability can still be huge. If I misunderstood something and I'm pursuing the wrong terminal goal(s)... well that'd be bad (how bad depends on how different my current goals are from "the real goals"). I'd love to hear others' takes on this. It appears that people live their lives as if things other than Your Happiness matter. Like Altruism and Truth. Ie, people pursue terminal values other than their own happiness. Is this true? I've really be interested in seeing a LW survey on terminal goals.

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