As far as I can tell, you stopped a little short of really understanding your own examples, and the essay becomes muddled as it goes along, perhaps for that reason. Your initial paragraph was interesting, but then you didn’t properly analyze the rest of it. Someone could say that everything you do is betting, but that is clearly untrue. Betting is in fact, a coherent category that is clearly different from buying groceries. Buying groceries, very low risk, moderate reward. Betting, high risk, high reward. I am against betting, but it is fully coherent for me to be in favor of buying groceries. Yes, investing in startups is betting. No, getting out of bed in the morning is not betting. Even costless copies are not free if you value people that are that like you. (Stated that way to avoid making a decision on whether they are you.) I don’t want my copies to be slave labor, whether temporarily or permanently, and I gain nothing from copies of me making and using their own money (whether or not I value them as people.). Preference satisfaction should obviously not involve creating wire-headed beings. (It isn’t a great measure for other reasons either, but that is a separate argument.) Happiness is obviously a coherent concept. It is an emotional result from things being good by my values, not because of surprise. When I listen to my favorite singers, I’m not at all surprised by how well they sing, and not by how well the music is made either, but I am very happy (also usually whatever emotions the song conveys.). I can reliably be happy when I want to be (though I spend very little time on being happy for the sake of being happy. I find wire-heading uninteresting even though I would obviously enjoy it.) Happy and surprised is a separate thing from just happy. Giving up happy because of surprise is a completely different thing than giving up happiness itself. Understanding the truth better usually makes me happier too. Time discount is not totally reliant on certainty of influencing the future. One of my values could very well be caring about the near future more than the distant future because of causal proximity, not causal certainty. I’m sure that I have a small but noticeable preference for now than then even ignoring that my effects are more certain now; far enough in the future, and very large means nothing to me. It would need to matter fundamentally to me rather than simple multiplication of some future value. I value things that are close to me. I care a great deal about the people I love existing, but only a little bit about people extremely like them existing in the far future. However, if it was actually them, then I would truly care. (Some things have a large discount for time, other, seemingly similar things have basically none.) The exact details of my values matter, not some generic size of impact and distance. It’s obvious we have fundamental values. As obvious as that I am conscious right now. (It’s logically possible I could be fundamentally altered to have different values, but I can comfortably say the result wouldn’t be me.) If the heuristics are wrong, just change them. Heuristics are heuristics of our values, not our values themselves, which is why people change the heuristics after being convinced they are unhelpful. Heuristics are not the fundamental thing, so them being messy isn’t really all that important a point here. I don’t mind changing my heuristics. Is happiness somethng I fundamentally value? Maybe so, maybe not (again, anti-wireheading.). I do, however, value the state of the universe being a certain way fundamentally, and in how we respond to it (key point). (For instance, I value true love regardless of whether that leads to greater utility.) The explanations would be very long, tedious, and require a lot of soul searching, but the exist. Perhaps you are mislead because you assume everything is utilitarian at heart? Virtue ethics would not make these mistakes. Nor would many other philosophies. Doing the math is just one virtue.
As far as I can tell, you stopped a little short of really understanding your own examples, and the essay becomes muddled as it goes along, perhaps for that reason. Your initial paragraph was interesting, but then you didn’t properly analyze the rest of it.
Someone could say that everything you do is betting, but that is clearly untrue. Betting is in fact, a coherent category that is clearly different from buying groceries. Buying groceries, very low risk, moderate reward. Betting, high risk, high reward. I am against betting, but it is fully coherent for me to be in favor of buying groceries. Yes, investing in startups is betting. No, getting out of bed in the morning is not betting.
Even costless copies are not free if you value people that are that like you. (Stated that way to avoid making a decision on whether they are you.) I don’t want my copies to be slave labor, whether temporarily or permanently, and I gain nothing from copies of me making and using their own money (whether or not I value them as people.).
Preference satisfaction should obviously not involve creating wire-headed beings. (It isn’t a great measure for other reasons either, but that is a separate argument.)
Happiness is obviously a coherent concept. It is an emotional result from things being good by my values, not because of surprise. When I listen to my favorite singers, I’m not at all surprised by how well they sing, and not by how well the music is made either, but I am very happy (also usually whatever emotions the song conveys.). I can reliably be happy when I want to be (though I spend very little time on being happy for the sake of being happy. I find wire-heading uninteresting even though I would obviously enjoy it.) Happy and surprised is a separate thing from just happy. Giving up happy because of surprise is a completely different thing than giving up happiness itself. Understanding the truth better usually makes me happier too.
Time discount is not totally reliant on certainty of influencing the future. One of my values could very well be caring about the near future more than the distant future because of causal proximity, not causal certainty. I’m sure that I have a small but noticeable preference for now than then even ignoring that my effects are more certain now; far enough in the future, and very large means nothing to me. It would need to matter fundamentally to me rather than simple multiplication of some future value.
I value things that are close to me. I care a great deal about the people I love existing, but only a little bit about people extremely like them existing in the far future. However, if it was actually them, then I would truly care. (Some things have a large discount for time, other, seemingly similar things have basically none.) The exact details of my values matter, not some generic size of impact and distance.
It’s obvious we have fundamental values. As obvious as that I am conscious right now. (It’s logically possible I could be fundamentally altered to have different values, but I can comfortably say the result wouldn’t be me.)
If the heuristics are wrong, just change them. Heuristics are heuristics of our values, not our values themselves, which is why people change the heuristics after being convinced they are unhelpful. Heuristics are not the fundamental thing, so them being messy isn’t really all that important a point here. I don’t mind changing my heuristics.
Is happiness somethng I fundamentally value? Maybe so, maybe not (again, anti-wireheading.). I do, however, value the state of the universe being a certain way fundamentally, and in how we respond to it (key point). (For instance, I value true love regardless of whether that leads to greater utility.) The explanations would be very long, tedious, and require a lot of soul searching, but the exist.
Perhaps you are mislead because you assume everything is utilitarian at heart? Virtue ethics would not make these mistakes. Nor would many other philosophies. Doing the math is just one virtue.