Hi weathersystems and Viliam, these are great ways to think about it! I especially like the link to terminal/intrinsic values, that does clarify a lot!
Using some of the terminology from that link, I would say it feels like my brain's built in values are mostly a big subgoal stomp, of mutually contradictory, inconsistent, and changeable values.
While those built in values work pretty well for many situations, e.g. I definitely wouldn't just randomly jump out a window, it seems like they provide very weak guidance for me when making a lot of important decisions, e.g. valuing work vs valuing family (which I both love).
Instead of relying on this subgoal stomp, it feels like... (read more)
I've learned a lot of ways to make smarter decisions (e.g. by being aware of cognitive biases) by reading LessWrong, but there are a ton of important questions where I don't even know what the goal is, so all those techniques don't really help. For example:
There is a lot... (read 158 more words →)
If you sell the land and improvements separately, you have to accept that you'll probably end up with different owners for the land and improvements. I believe mobile homes are usually sold with a similar system, as the land and the home are usually owned by different people. Might be interesting to study that. I don't have any experience with that system, but the incentives seem pretty bad, e.g. if you have great improvements on the land, the land owner can increase your rent dramatically, knowing that you won't abandon your improvements.
Thanks Viliam and weathersystems! Sorry it took me a little while to respond, I wanted to make sure I had read and understood the pointers to the related work you guys provided.
I spent some time digging deeper into inclusive fitness. Social Evolution and Inclusive Fitness Theory: An Introduction by James A. R. Marshall provides a good summary.
There are indeed proofs which... (read 591 more words →)