“You may argue that the extremely wealthy and famous don’t represent the desires of ordinary humans. I say the opposite: Non-wealthy, non-famous people, being more constrained by need and by social convention, and having no hope of ever attaining their desires, don’t represent, or even allow themselves to acknowledge, the actual desires of humans.”
I have a huge problem with this statement. This is taking one subset of the population where you can measure what they value by their actions, and saying without evidence that they represent the general population whom you can’t measure because resources limit the ability of their actions to reflect their values.
You are assuming that the experience of being rich or being famous doesn’t change ones values.
I suspect that the value of reclusion for instance is a direct result of being so famous that one is hounded in public, and that a relatively unknown middle class male wouldn’t place near as much value on it.
“You may argue that the extremely wealthy and famous don’t represent the desires of ordinary humans. I say the opposite: Non-wealthy, non-famous people, being more constrained by need and by social convention, and having no hope of ever attaining their desires, don’t represent, or even allow themselves to acknowledge, the actual desires of humans.”
I have a huge problem with this statement. This is taking one subset of the population where you can measure what they value by their actions, and saying without evidence that they represent the general population whom you can’t measure because resources limit the ability of their actions to reflect their values.
You are assuming that the experience of being rich or being famous doesn’t change ones values.
I suspect that the value of reclusion for instance is a direct result of being so famous that one is hounded in public, and that a relatively unknown middle class male wouldn’t place near as much value on it.