Thanks for the link. Reading through it, I feel all the intuitions it describes. At the same time I feel there may be some kind of divergence between my narrowly focused preferences and my wider preferences. I may prefer to have a preference for creating 1000 happy people rather then preventing the suffering of 100 sad people because that would mean I have more appreciation of life itself. The direct intuition is based on my current brain but the wider preference is based on what I’d prefer (with my current brain) my preference to be.
Should I use my current brain’s preferences or my preferred brain’s preferences in answering those questions (honest question)? Would you prefer to appreciate life itself more and if so would that make you less in favor of suffering-focused ethics?
Should I use my current brain’s preferences or my preferred brain’s preferences in answering those questions (honest question)?
I generally think that if one part of your brain prefers X and another part of your brain prefers that you would not prefer X, then the right move is probably not to try to declare one of them correct and the other wrong. Rather, both parts are probably correct in some sense, but they’re attending to different aspects of reality and coming to different conclusions because of that. If you can find out how exactly they are both correct, it might be possible for them to come to agreement.
Appreciation in general seems to feel good, so I would probably prefer to appreciate most things more than I do currently.
and if so would that make you less in favor of suffering-focused ethics?
Seems unclear. I could imagine it going that way but also it not going that way. E.g. if someone appreciates their romantic partner a lot, that doesn’t necessarily imply that they would like to have more romantic partners (though it might!). In a similar way, I could easily see myself appreciating currently-existing life more, without necessarily that leading to a desire to increase the total amount of life in the universe.
Thanks for the link. Reading through it, I feel all the intuitions it describes. At the same time I feel there may be some kind of divergence between my narrowly focused preferences and my wider preferences. I may prefer to have a preference for creating 1000 happy people rather then preventing the suffering of 100 sad people because that would mean I have more appreciation of life itself. The direct intuition is based on my current brain but the wider preference is based on what I’d prefer (with my current brain) my preference to be.
Should I use my current brain’s preferences or my preferred brain’s preferences in answering those questions (honest question)? Would you prefer to appreciate life itself more and if so would that make you less in favor of suffering-focused ethics?
I generally think that if one part of your brain prefers X and another part of your brain prefers that you would not prefer X, then the right move is probably not to try to declare one of them correct and the other wrong. Rather, both parts are probably correct in some sense, but they’re attending to different aspects of reality and coming to different conclusions because of that. If you can find out how exactly they are both correct, it might be possible for them to come to agreement.
E.g. Internal Double Crux is one technique for doing something like this.
Appreciation in general seems to feel good, so I would probably prefer to appreciate most things more than I do currently.
Seems unclear. I could imagine it going that way but also it not going that way. E.g. if someone appreciates their romantic partner a lot, that doesn’t necessarily imply that they would like to have more romantic partners (though it might!). In a similar way, I could easily see myself appreciating currently-existing life more, without necessarily that leading to a desire to increase the total amount of life in the universe.