Okay, so one thing I actually want here is for Stuart to clarify what he means by “values.” One thing you might mean by a person’s values changing as they get older is something like, I used to value eating as much ice cream as possible, and now I value reading books, or something. But this is pretty far on the instrumental side of instrumental vs. terminal values. One thing you might mean by a person’s values staying the same as they get older, more in the terminal values direction, is something like, I used to value having fun and now I still value having fun.
Instrumental values can change all the time in response to learning more about how the world works and what sorts of strategies do or do not get you your terminal values, but that’s orthogonal to the question of whether your terminal values are drifting (to the extent that it even makes sense to ask this question of a human) and whether that’s good or not.
Personally, I usually like the values of five-year-olds better than the values of adults. The five-year-olds haven’t had the ambition beaten out of them yet, they at least still have their sights aimed high. They want to be astronauts or whatever. You talk to the average adult over thirty, and their life goals amount to “impress friends/family, raise the kids well, prep for retirement, have some fun”.
Side note: I remember lying in bed worrying about this back in sixth grade. I promised myself I wouldn’t abandon my ambitions when I got older. Turns out I broke that promise; I decided my childhood ambitions weren’t ambitious enough. It just never occurred to me until high school that “don’t die at all” could be on the table.
By and large 5 years old don’t have such lofty values (well lofty for you at least). And they are incredibly cruel—maybe you weren’t but then you were an outlier. I suspect you were probably less kind and more selfish than you are now, even though you didn’t probably didn’t realize it at the time (and probably couldn’t, and that’s precisely why children tend to be like this, it’s incredibly hard for them to course correct without outside intervention).
That’s a nitpick. He said you’d **probably** have cause to pity him, and indeed, except in rare ubermensch I think that would be the case.
Okay, so one thing I actually want here is for Stuart to clarify what he means by “values.” One thing you might mean by a person’s values changing as they get older is something like, I used to value eating as much ice cream as possible, and now I value reading books, or something. But this is pretty far on the instrumental side of instrumental vs. terminal values. One thing you might mean by a person’s values staying the same as they get older, more in the terminal values direction, is something like, I used to value having fun and now I still value having fun.
Instrumental values can change all the time in response to learning more about how the world works and what sorts of strategies do or do not get you your terminal values, but that’s orthogonal to the question of whether your terminal values are drifting (to the extent that it even makes sense to ask this question of a human) and whether that’s good or not.
Personally, I usually like the values of five-year-olds better than the values of adults. The five-year-olds haven’t had the ambition beaten out of them yet, they at least still have their sights aimed high. They want to be astronauts or whatever. You talk to the average adult over thirty, and their life goals amount to “impress friends/family, raise the kids well, prep for retirement, have some fun”.
Side note: I remember lying in bed worrying about this back in sixth grade. I promised myself I wouldn’t abandon my ambitions when I got older. Turns out I broke that promise; I decided my childhood ambitions weren’t ambitious enough. It just never occurred to me until high school that “don’t die at all” could be on the table.
By and large 5 years old don’t have such lofty values (well lofty for you at least). And they are incredibly cruel—maybe you weren’t but then you were an outlier. I suspect you were probably less kind and more selfish than you are now, even though you didn’t probably didn’t realize it at the time (and probably couldn’t, and that’s precisely why children tend to be like this, it’s incredibly hard for them to course correct without outside intervention).