Presumably your value computation includes values other than “enjoying doing something”. For example given the explicit choice between getting to enjoy delicious food for the next 5 years at the expense of having a child starve, versus having average food and letting the child live, most people would choose the latter—even if they were extremely confident that there were no ulterior consequences of any kind and the food would contain additives to surgically neuter any guilt they might otherwise feel.
The case regarding your playing WoW instead of doing something else may be less clear cut than that, but one example is enough to prove that there is nothing unusual about valuing something more strongly than one’s own enjoyment of some activity. A related Less Wrong trope is “orgasmium”, which is considered by most to be an undesirable future for humanity despite its being defined as a state of optimal bliss.
Whether or not playing WoW is actually what you should do depends on your what your other values are, besides wanting to enjoy WoW—and you probably know more than anyone else here about those values; although since humans generally possess similar values, depending on your ability to introspect and imagine your response to certain arguments and stimuli you might not. After all, shouldness is a two-place function that takes as one of its arguments your own brain. It also depends on how accurate your model of reality apart from your value computation is (for example, if you had never taken drugs you might be unaware of how pleasurable, or displeasurable, that is).
But as far as your values are similar to the majority of humans, WoW loses out to other, stronger values a lot of the time because:
a) it is inconsequential and unproductive
b) it is seen as a solitary activity
c) it is aesthetically displeasing in lots of other, small ways, e.g. the physical position of the human, his lack of attention to the environment, the narrow range of emotion, the pandering to the lowest common denominator/ mass consumption, the dependency on interacting with someone else’s software cynically created to maximise addiction instead of beauty or inventiveness...
d) it is time-consuming, compared to many other hedonistic activities
Also consider the distinction between wanting and liking—although most people are not explicitly aware of this distinction, they probably have some intuitive feeling that they do not “enjoy” WoW so much as they cannot help but do it.
For example given the explicit choice between getting to enjoy delicious food for the next 5 years at the expense of having a child starve, versus having average food and letting the child live, most people would choose the latter—even if they were extremely confident that there were no ulterior consequences of any kind and the food would contain additives to surgically neuter any guilt they might otherwise feel.
Er, isn’t that the choice most people face, and don’t most people choose tasty food? Even people with ascetic diets- like myself- seem to do it primarily out of the joy they find in asceticism rather than to free up productive power than others.
I don’t think so. That might be true in some limited contexts, but if you live in the First World you’re not meaningfully contributing to conditions of food scarcity where it matters by choosing to eat well. Scarcity of resources on a global scale isn’t what causes people to starve; more than enough productive capacity exists, at least for now. The problem is more that local economics and logistical systems sometimes don’t provide sufficient incentive to get that food where it needs to go, and the West spontaneously choosing to adopt an ascetic diet wouldn’t help that: it’d push the demand side down and make agribusiness less lucrative, but it couldn’t empower your average lower-class family in the Horn of Africa, for example, to buy expensive imports to replace the crops failing due to the current drought.
There are some sustainability arguments you could make, but that’s political enough that I’d rather not touch it for mind-killer reasons.
I agree that the choices are different in the first world between poor people and people middle class and up. It’s the second group of people that I’m claiming are making (or choosing not to think about) this choice.
One can eat equally healthy food for less money, but it is less tasty. I enjoy eating meat, but vegetable protein (beans+rice, etc) is much cheaper. People have the choice to spend less on their own food, and provide more food for other people.
(More caveats: I doubt cutting your food budget is the best place to save money. I favor the giving what we can approach of pledging to give 10% of income and cut wherever you prefer.)
Somebody needs to tell this to the junk food industry.
Fill up a grocery cart with a month’s worth of potato chips. Fill up another grocery cart with a month’s worth of wheat, rice, and beans (preferably bought in bags of no less than 10 pounds). Compare costs.
Factoring in the costs of buying a car to get to a place where they sell those things? Interesting question.
Edit: That came out wrong. I think the question isn’t really that simple (opportunity costs, etc etc), but I acknowledge the disparity in price you are pointing out.
It probably wasn’t the best example. But I did say “explicit” choice—i.e. some agent offered them this choice directly for whatever reason. It may be true that we are disturbingly amoral when the effects of our actions are several steps removed, the victim is at a distance etc. And it may be true that we don’t tend to shut up and multiply in moral matters. But given my clarification, the point still stands that there is nothing unusual about prioritising other values above our own enjoyment of something.
Presumably your value computation includes values other than “enjoying doing something”. For example given the explicit choice between getting to enjoy delicious food for the next 5 years at the expense of having a child starve, versus having average food and letting the child live, most people would choose the latter—even if they were extremely confident that there were no ulterior consequences of any kind and the food would contain additives to surgically neuter any guilt they might otherwise feel.
The case regarding your playing WoW instead of doing something else may be less clear cut than that, but one example is enough to prove that there is nothing unusual about valuing something more strongly than one’s own enjoyment of some activity. A related Less Wrong trope is “orgasmium”, which is considered by most to be an undesirable future for humanity despite its being defined as a state of optimal bliss.
Whether or not playing WoW is actually what you should do depends on your what your other values are, besides wanting to enjoy WoW—and you probably know more than anyone else here about those values; although since humans generally possess similar values, depending on your ability to introspect and imagine your response to certain arguments and stimuli you might not. After all, shouldness is a two-place function that takes as one of its arguments your own brain. It also depends on how accurate your model of reality apart from your value computation is (for example, if you had never taken drugs you might be unaware of how pleasurable, or displeasurable, that is).
But as far as your values are similar to the majority of humans, WoW loses out to other, stronger values a lot of the time because:
a) it is inconsequential and unproductive
b) it is seen as a solitary activity
c) it is aesthetically displeasing in lots of other, small ways, e.g. the physical position of the human, his lack of attention to the environment, the narrow range of emotion, the pandering to the lowest common denominator/ mass consumption, the dependency on interacting with someone else’s software cynically created to maximise addiction instead of beauty or inventiveness...
d) it is time-consuming, compared to many other hedonistic activities
Also consider the distinction between wanting and liking—although most people are not explicitly aware of this distinction, they probably have some intuitive feeling that they do not “enjoy” WoW so much as they cannot help but do it.
Er, isn’t that the choice most people face, and don’t most people choose tasty food? Even people with ascetic diets- like myself- seem to do it primarily out of the joy they find in asceticism rather than to free up productive power than others.
I don’t think so. That might be true in some limited contexts, but if you live in the First World you’re not meaningfully contributing to conditions of food scarcity where it matters by choosing to eat well. Scarcity of resources on a global scale isn’t what causes people to starve; more than enough productive capacity exists, at least for now. The problem is more that local economics and logistical systems sometimes don’t provide sufficient incentive to get that food where it needs to go, and the West spontaneously choosing to adopt an ascetic diet wouldn’t help that: it’d push the demand side down and make agribusiness less lucrative, but it couldn’t empower your average lower-class family in the Horn of Africa, for example, to buy expensive imports to replace the crops failing due to the current drought.
There are some sustainability arguments you could make, but that’s political enough that I’d rather not touch it for mind-killer reasons.
Tasty food is, as a whole, more expensive. We could present the choice as:
“”″
You are given the explicit choice between:
1) spending $N to eat delicious food for the next 5 years
2) spending $M to eat average food for the next five years and donate $(N-M) to prevent children starving
“”″
I believe $(N-M) is more than enough to keep one child from starving.
Note: I do think we have a (large) duty to help other people, I don’t think food donation is the best way to do it.
Somebody needs to tell this to the junk food industry.
It’s probably true that expensive food is, as a whole, more tasty, but I’m not so sure that the reverse holds.
I agree that the choices are different in the first world between poor people and people middle class and up. It’s the second group of people that I’m claiming are making (or choosing not to think about) this choice.
One can eat equally healthy food for less money, but it is less tasty. I enjoy eating meat, but vegetable protein (beans+rice, etc) is much cheaper. People have the choice to spend less on their own food, and provide more food for other people.
(More caveats: I doubt cutting your food budget is the best place to save money. I favor the giving what we can approach of pledging to give 10% of income and cut wherever you prefer.)
Fill up a grocery cart with a month’s worth of potato chips. Fill up another grocery cart with a month’s worth of wheat, rice, and beans (preferably bought in bags of no less than 10 pounds). Compare costs.
Factoring in the costs of buying a car to get to a place where they sell those things? Interesting question.
Edit: That came out wrong. I think the question isn’t really that simple (opportunity costs, etc etc), but I acknowledge the disparity in price you are pointing out.
It probably wasn’t the best example. But I did say “explicit” choice—i.e. some agent offered them this choice directly for whatever reason. It may be true that we are disturbingly amoral when the effects of our actions are several steps removed, the victim is at a distance etc. And it may be true that we don’t tend to shut up and multiply in moral matters. But given my clarification, the point still stands that there is nothing unusual about prioritising other values above our own enjoyment of something.