Discusses a formalism for a discussion of the relationship between terminal and instrumental values. Terminal values are world states that we assign some sort of positive or negative worth to. Instrumental values are links in a chain of events that lead to desired world states.
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Thou Art Godshatter, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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Today's post, Terminal Values and Instrumental Values was originally published on 15 November 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Thou Art Godshatter, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.