This is indeed a meaningful distinction! I’d phrase it as:
Values about what the entire cosmos should be like
Values about what kind of places one wants one’s (future) selves to inhabit (eg, in an internet-like upload-utopia, “what servers does one want to hang out on”)
“Global” and “local” is not the worst nomenclature. Maybe “global” vs “personal” values? I dunno.
my best idea is to call the former “global preferences” and the latter “local preferences”, but that clashes with the pre-existing notion of locality of preferences as the quality of terminally caring more about people/objects closer to you in spacetime
I mean, it’s not unrelated! One can view a utility function with both kinds of values as a combination of two utility functions: the part that only cares about the state of the entire cosmos and the part that only cares about what’s around them (see also “locally-caring agents”).
(One might be tempted to say “consequentialist” vs “experiential”, but I don’t think that’s right — one can still value contact with reality in their personal/local values.)
This is indeed a meaningful distinction! I’d phrase it as:
Values about what the entire cosmos should be like
Values about what kind of places one wants one’s (future) selves to inhabit (eg, in an internet-like upload-utopia, “what servers does one want to hang out on”)
“Global” and “local” is not the worst nomenclature. Maybe “global” vs “personal” values? I dunno.
I mean, it’s not unrelated! One can view a utility function with both kinds of values as a combination of two utility functions: the part that only cares about the state of the entire cosmos and the part that only cares about what’s around them (see also “locally-caring agents”).
(One might be tempted to say “consequentialist” vs “experiential”, but I don’t think that’s right — one can still value contact with reality in their personal/local values.)