It doesn’t. If you want other people to get what they want, then when that happens, you get something you want. You have to trade it off against other wants, but everybody has to do that, even people who only can’t decide what to have for dinner.
Do all preferences work this way, or are there some which don’t have to be traded off at all?
These questions really should go in the “stupid questions open thread”, but I can’t seem to find a recent one. Thanks for taking the time to answer me.
No problem. You can only have a preference that doesn’t get traded off with if it happens to never conflict with anything—for instance, my preference that there be a moon has yet to interact with any other preferences I could act towards fulfilling; the moon just goes on being regardless—or, if it’s your only preference. Even if you have only one preference, there could be tradeoffs about instrumental subgoals. You might have to decide between a 50% chance of ten units of preference-fulfillment and a guarantee of five units, even if you’d really like to have both at once, even if the units are the only thing you care about.
That’s a preference.
Even though it causes one to systematically get less of what ze wants?
It doesn’t. If you want other people to get what they want, then when that happens, you get something you want. You have to trade it off against other wants, but everybody has to do that, even people who only can’t decide what to have for dinner.
Do all preferences work this way, or are there some which don’t have to be traded off at all?
These questions really should go in the “stupid questions open thread”, but I can’t seem to find a recent one. Thanks for taking the time to answer me.
No problem. You can only have a preference that doesn’t get traded off with if it happens to never conflict with anything—for instance, my preference that there be a moon has yet to interact with any other preferences I could act towards fulfilling; the moon just goes on being regardless—or, if it’s your only preference. Even if you have only one preference, there could be tradeoffs about instrumental subgoals. You might have to decide between a 50% chance of ten units of preference-fulfillment and a guarantee of five units, even if you’d really like to have both at once, even if the units are the only thing you care about.