= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
advancedatheist comments on Open Thread, Jun. 8 - Jun. 14, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (153)
I have reservations about postulating "happiness" as some kind of metaphysical goal for humans. "Happiness" seems to have come about as an evolutionary spandrel, since unhappy humans can breed and keep the species in business just fine.
The implied teleology in Buddhist "enlightenment" also bothers me. Why would humans have the capacity for this experience? Again, it sounds like another spandrel.
Of course it is an evolutionary spandrel, but we don't necessarily need to choose our goals to have the same ones as those of the evolution machine.
But I think the important part is that there is a very fine line of unhappiness with which humans can still be effectively working on goals. Even a minor, unnoticed, undiagnosed, and generally invisible depression can easily make people significantly less motivated to work on anything. If you choose any goal, say, colonizing the galaxy, you probably need at the very least almost happy people to work effectively on it. You need the kind of people who can joke and share a laugh while working, and feel content after a days work. If you have people who are constantly in a fuck-everything Office Space type of mood, they will not really achieve much.
Why should the evolutionary history of an experience effect our pursuance of it as a goal? Is != ought.
this was an unhelpful comment, removed and replaced by this comment
Describing the source of human values is not the same as answering if those values SHOULD be our values. You've just pushed the is ought problem to a different place.
Was your answer trying to reply to my original question? (Why should the evolutionary history of an experience effect our pursuance of it as a goal?) If so, can you clarify how it answers that.