By "manufactured values" I meant artificial values coming from nurture rather than innate human nature. Obviously there are things we give terminal value, and things we give instrumental value. I meant to refer to a subset of our terminal values which we were not born with. That may be a null set, if it is impossible to manufacture artificial values from scratch or from acquired tastes. Even if this is the case, that wouldn't imply that instrumental values could not be constructed from terminal values as we learn about the world. There are 4 possible categories, and I meant only to refer to the last one:

• Innate terminal values: “Being generous is innately good, and those who share are good people.” (Note: “generosity admired” is on the list of human universals, so it’s likely to be an innate value we are born with.)

• Innate instrumental values: N/A (I don’t think there is anything in this category, because innate human values in babies precede the capacity to reason and develop instrumental values. Maybe certain aesthetic values don’t express themselves until a baby first opens its eyes, and so there could be reasoned instrumental values which are more “innate” than aesthetic values.)

• learned instrumental values: “eating spicy food is good to do because it clears your sinuses”

• learned terminal values (that is, “manufactured” values): “Bacteria suffering matters, even though I have no emotional connection to them, because of these abstract notions of fairness.” Or, alternatively “Eating spicy food is a pure, virtuous activity in its own right rather than for some other reason. Those who partake are thus good people, and those who don’t are unclean and subhuman.” The former is merely extrapolated from existing values and dubbed a terminal value, while the latter arises from an artificially conditioned aesthetic.

To use a more LW-central example, those of us who favor epistemic rationality over instrumental rationality do so because true knowledge is a terminal value for us. If this value is a human universal, then that would be strong evidence that every neurotypical baby is born valuing truth, and therefore that truth-seeking is a terminal value. If only a few cultures value truth, then it would seem more plausible that truth-seeking was a manufactured terminal value or an instrumental value.

To test ideas like this, we can look at the terms on the list related to epistemic rationality: abstraction in speech & thought, classification, conjectural reasoning, interpolation, logical notions [there are several examples on the list], measuring, numerals (counting), overestimating objectivity of thought, semantics [several semantic categories are also on the list], true and false distinguished. So, either all cultures get a lot of value out of instrumental truth-seeking, or truth-seeking is an innate human value. Judging by the curiosity of children, I’m strongly inclined toward the latter. Perhaps LW users have refined and accentuated their innate human curiosity, but it certainly doesn’t seem like a manufactured value.

But it looks like you guys forced me to make my question specific enough that I could answer it empirically. I could just take each item on the list of the twelve virtues of rationality, or any other list I thought gave a good representation of LW values or intellectual values. Just cross-reference them against a couple lists of human universals and lists of traits of small children. If very small children display a value, it’s probably innate, but may be learned very early. If no infants have it but some/all adults do, it’s probably a learned value developed later in life. If it seems like it is probably a learned value, and seems subjectively to be a terminal value, then it is manufactured.

Also, to be clear, just because something is manufactured doesn’t make it a bad thing. To say so is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. However, altering one’s utility function is scary. If we are going to replace our natural impulses with more refined values, we should do so carefully. Things like the trolley problem arguably segregate people who have replaced their default values with more abstract utilitarian notions (value all lives equally, regardless of in-group or a sense of duty). Extrapolating new values from existing ones doesn’t seem as dangerous as deriving them from acquired tastes.

the idea of people buying our product because we are EAs makes me uncomfortable.

In retrospect, I think that would make me uncomfortable too. In your position, I'd probably feel like I'd delivered an ultimatum to someone else, even if they were the one who actually made the suggestion. On the other hand, maybe a deep feeling of obligation to charity isn't a bad thing?

Would you say that you are not interested in paying more for a healthier product, not convinced that MealSquares is better for you, something else?

Based on my (fairly limited) understanding of nutrition, I suspect that any marginal difference between your products is fairly small. I suspect humans get strongly diminishing returns (in the form of increased lifespan) once we have our basic nutritional requirements met in bio-available forms and without huge amounts of anything harmful. After that, I'd expect the noise to overpower the signal. For example, perhaps unmeasured factors like my mood or eating habits change as a function of my Soylent/MealSquares choice, and I wind up getting fast food more often, or get less work done or something. Let's say it would take me a month of solid researching and reading nutrition textbooks to make a semi-educated decision of which of two good things is best. Would the added health benefit give me an additional month of life? What if I value my healthy life, here and now, far more than 1 more month spent senile in a nursing home? What if I also apply hyperbolic discounting?

I've probably done more directed health-related reading than most people. (Maybe 24 hours total, over the pasty year or so?) Enough to minimize the biggest causes of death, and have some vague idea of what "healthy" might look like. Enough to start fooling around with my own DIY soylent, even if I wouldn't want to eat that every day without more research. If someone who sounds knowledgeable sits down and does an independent review, I'd probably read it and scan the comments for critiques of the review.

Someone gave you a downvote. If it was on my behalf or on the behalf of Soylent, then for the record I thought it was funny. :)

Hmmm, that's worrying. I played with some numbers for a 5'6" male, and got this:

99 lbs yields "Your BMI is way too low to be living"
100lbs yields 74 years
150lbs yields 76 years
200lbs yields 73 years
250lbs yields 69 years
300lbs yields 69 years
500lbs yields 69 years
999lbs yields 69 years

It looks to me like they are pulling data from a table, and the table maxes out under 250lbs?

avoiding obesity

Not to be pedantic, but I thought this might be of interest: As I understand it, amount of exercise is a better predictor of lifespan than weight. That is, I would expect someone overweight but who exercises regularly to outlive someone skinny who never exercises.

For example, this life expectancy calculator outputs 70 years for a 5"6" 25 year old male who weighs 300lbs, but exercises vigorously daily. Changing the weight to 150 lbs and putting in no exercise raised the life expectancy by only 1 year. (a bit less than I was expecting, actually. I was about to significantly update, but then it occurred to me that 300 lbs isn't the definition of obesity. I knew this previously, but apparently hadn't fully internalized that.) EDIT: This calculator may not work well for weights over ~250 lbs. See comment below.

So, my top two recommendations to friends would be quit smoking and exercise regularly. I'd recommend Less Wrongers either do high intensity workouts once a can read or watch Khan Academy or listen to The week to minimize the amount of time spent on non-productive activities, or pick a more frequent but lower intensity activity they Sequences audiobook while doing. I'm not an expert or anything. That's just the impression I've gotten from my own research.

you'll help us earn money for effective giving

I realize you are in the startup phase now, and so it probably makes sense for you to put any surplus funds into growth rather than donating now. However, 2 questions:

1. Once you finish with your growth phase, about what percent of your net proceeds do you expect to donate?

2. What sorts of EA charities are you interested in?

I've been using MealSquares regularly, without realizing that that you guys were LWers or EAs. As such, I've been using mostly s/Soylent because of the cost difference. (A 400 Calorie MealSquare is ~$3, a 400 Calorie jug of Soylent 2.0 is ~$2.83, 400 Calories worth of unmixed Soylent powder is ~$1.83, and the ingredients for 400 Calories worth of DIY People Chow are ~$0.70. All these are slightly cheaper with a subscription/large purchase.)

I ask, because if you happen to be interested in similar EA causes to me, and expect to eventually donate X% of proceeds, then I should be budgeting my expenses to factor that in. If (100%-X%) * MealSquaresCost < soylentCost, then I would buy much less soylent and much (/many?) more MealSquares. I'd be paying a premium to Soylent in order to add a bit more culinary variety. (Also, I realize this X isn't equal to the expected altruistic return on investment, but that would be even harder to estimate.)

Good point. It seems like we 1) value an incredibly diverse assortment of things, and 2) value our freedom to fixate on any particular one of those things. So, any future which lacks some option we now have will be lacking. Because at some point we have to choose one future over another, perhaps we will always have a tiny bit of nostalgia. (Assuming that the notion of removing that nostalgia from our minds is also abhorrent.)

I'll also note that after a bit more contemplation, I've shifted my views from what I expressed in the second paragraph of my comment above. It seems plausible that certain classes of problems tickle a certain part of our brain. Visual stimuli excite our visual cortex, so maybe Rubik's Cubes excite the parts of our brain involved in spatial reasoning. It seems plausible, then, that we could add entire new modules to our minds for solving entire new classes of problems. Perhaps neuroplasticity allows us to already do this to a degree, but it also seems likely that a digital mind would be much less restricted in this regard.