Right, those words definitely seem more accurate to me!

It is the case that Bryce is, ostensibly, just trying to help Ash fulfill their terminal goals while being healthier. The problem is that Bryce presumes that of the available action space, ice cream is fungible for something else that is healthier, and does not listen when Ash reasserts that ice cream itself is the thing they want.

Just because it is a safe bet that Ash will share the value/desire for good health does not mean Ash must prioritize good health in every action they take.

I just donated $1,000. This is not a minor amount for me, and I almost just donated $10 as suggested in Shoshannah's comment,  but I knew I could donate that much without thought or effort, and I wanted to really put at least some effort into this, after seeing how much obvious effort Oliver and others at Lesswrong have been putting in. 

My decision process was as follows:

First, I dealt with my risk aversion/loss aversion/flinch response to giving large sums of money away. This took a couple minutes, much faster than it used to be thanks to things like my Season of Wealth a couple years ago, but felt like a mildly sharp object jiggling around in my chest until I smoothed it out with reminders of how much money I make these days compared to the relatively poor upbringing I had and the not-particularly-high salary I made for the first ~decade of my adult life. 

Second, I thought of how much I value Lesswrong and Lighthaven existing in the world as a vague thing. Impersonally, not in the ways they have affected me, just like... worlds-with-these-people-doing-this-thing-in-it vs worlds-without. This got me up to a feeling of more than double what I wanted to give, somewhere around 25ish.

Third, I thought about how much value I personally have gained from Lesswrong and Lighthaven. I cannot really put a number on this. It's hard to disentangle the value from all the various sources in the rationality space, and the people who posts on LW and attended Lighthaven events. This ballooned the amount to something extremely hard to measure. Far more than $100, but probably less than 10,000? 

Fourth, I dealt with the flinch-response again. 10,000 is a lot for me. I lost more than that due to FTX's collapse even before the clawback stress started, and that took a bit of time to stop feeling internal jabs over. A few subsections needed dealing with; what if I have an emergency and need lots of money? What if my hypothetical future wife or kids do? Would I regret donating then? This bumped me way back down to the hundreds range.

Fifth, I thought about how I would feel if I woke up today and instead of reading this post, I read a post saying that they had to shut down Lighthaven, and maybe even LessWrong, due to lack of funding. How much I would regret not having donated money, even if it didn't end up helping. I'm still quite sad that we lost Wytham, and would pay money to retroactively try to save it if I could. This brought me up to something like $3-500.

Sixth, I confronted the niggling thought of "hopefully someone out there will donate enough that my contribution will not really matter, so maybe I don't even need to really donate much at all?" This thought felt bad, and I had a brief chat with my parts, thanking my internal pragmatism for its role in ensuring we're not being wasteful before exploring together if this is the sort of person we want to be when other people might need us. After that conversation was over the number had stabilized around 500.

Seventh, I thought about the social signal if I say I donated a lot and how this might encourage others to donate more too, effectively increasing the amount Lesswrong gets, and decided this didn't really affect much. Maybe a minor effect toward increasing, but nothing noticeable.

Eighth, I thought about the impact to the world re: Alignment. I felt the black hole there, the potential infinite abyss that I could throw my savings and life into and probably not get any useful effect out of, and spent some time with that before examining it again and feeling like another few hundred may not "make sense" in one direction or the other, but felt better than not doing it.

And ninth, I finally thought about the individuals working at Lighthaven that I know. How much do I trust them? How much do I want them to feel supported and motivated and cared for by the community they're contributing so much to?

By the end of that I was around 8-900 and I thought, fuck it, I've made stupider financial decisions than an extra hundred bucks for a fancy T-shirt, and nice round numbers are nice and round.

Thank you all for all you do. I hope this helps.

Sure. So, there are some workplaces have implicit cultural norms that aren't written down but are crucial for career advancement. Always being available and responding to emails quickly might be an unspoken expectation, or participating in after-work social events might not be mandatory but would be noted and count against people looking for promotion. Certain dress codes or communication styles might be rewarded or penalized beyond their actual professional relevance.

In a community, this usually comes as a form of purity testing of some kind, but can also be related to preferences around how you socialize or what you spend your time doing. If you're in a community that thinks sex-work is low status, for example, and you want to ask if that's true... just asking might in fact be costly, because it might clue people in to your potential interest in doing it.

Does that make sense?

I agree that those are the thoughts at the surface-level of Bryce in those situations, and they are not the same as "it's wrong/stupid to enjoy eating ice cream."

But I think in many cases, they often do imply "and you are stupid/irrational if knowing these things does not spoil your enjoyment or shift your hedonic attractor." And even if Bryce genuinely doesn't feel that way, I hope they would still be very careful with their wording to avoid that implication.

The implication that the preference itself is bad only works with assumptions that the preference will cause harm, to yourself or others, even if you don't act on it. But I don't think this is always true; it's often a matter of degree or context, and how the person's inner life works.

We could certainly say it is inconvenient or dysfunctional to have a preference that causes suffering for the self or others, and maybe that's what you mean by "bad." But this still doesn't justify the assertion that "expressing" the preference is "wrong." That's the thing that feels particularly presumptuous, to me, about how preferences should be distinguished from actions.

Ah, yeah I definitely struggle a bit sometimes with people who make objective-assertion-type-statements when promoting or defending things they enjoy. I also gain quite a lot of enjoyment from looking at various kinds of media with a critical eye; I just do my best to keep that criticism in contexts where the listener or reader wants to share it :)

Excellent points! Yes, this is definitely a fun and interesting thing to engage with intellectually so long as both people feel like it's being done in a non-judgmental or agendic way. Part of why I included the paragraphs about non-filtering being hard for some people is that I know there are some brains for which this genuinely doesn't feel like it "should" be hostile or pressurey, since they don't perceive it that way... but as in all things, that's why your point about actually paying attention to what the other person says and taking it seriously is so important.

Makes sense! I probably will not have time to dedicate to do this properly over the next few days, but maybe after that.

I'm a little confused. Do the examples in the post seem purely hypothetical to you? They're all real things I have encountered or heard from others:

1. Whether or not it's rational to have ice cream (or other unhealthy indulgences).
2. Whether or not wanting your high-earning partner to do housework is reasonable.
3. Whether being hurt by unfiltered criticism or judgements is rational.
4. Whether being mono vs open vs poly is a sign of rationality.
5. Whether your career preference is a sign of how smart or rational you are.

Obviously not all are as equally detailed, and I could always add more, but if it doesn't seem concrete enough yet, I'm not sure what else I should add or in how much detail to hit the target better.