I didn't know you weren't interested in it at all, but I knew you were more interested in the practice part. Come to think of it, I suspect that you're exaggerating in saying that you don't really care about it at all.

Hah, and I thought I was literal. I guess I'm interested in knowing the "in theory" just so I can make connections (like adherents to different moral systems have different tendencies in terms of making decisions consciously vs. subconsciously) to the "in practice"

The other important point is that I've screwed up and need to be better. I have an instinct to interpret things literally. I also try hard to look for what people probably meant given more contextual-type clues, but I've partially failed in this instance, and I think that all the information was there for me to succeed.

But at the same time, you've really helped me figure out my point, which wouldn't have happened if you said "nice article, I get what you're saying here." In regular life conversations, it's better to just think about what someone meant and reply to that, but for an article like this, it was totally worthwhile for you to reply to what I actually said and share what you thought it implied.

I think that we agree, but let me just make sure: ends are arbitrary in the sense that you could pick whatever ends you want, [and you can't say that they're inherently good/bad.] But they aren't arbitrary in the sense that what actually drives us isn't arbitrary at all. Agree?

The bracketed part I don't care about. Discussing "inherently good/bad" seems like a philosophical debate that hinges on our ideas of "inherent." The rest, I agree :) We seem to choose which actions to take arbitrarily, and through those actions we seemingly arbitrarily position ourselves somewhere on the happiness-goodness continuum.

Let me try to rephrase this to see if I understood and agree: "People who seem very rational seem to act in ways that don't maximize their personal happiness. One possibility is that they are trying to optimize for personal happiness but failing. I think it's more likely that they are optimizing for goodness in addition to happiness. Furthermore, this seems to be true for a lot of people.

Great wording! May I plagiarize?