If I value a thing at one period of life and turn away from it later, I have not discovered something about my values. My values have changed. In the case of the teenager we call this process “maturing”. Wine maturing in a barrel is not becoming what it always was, but simply becoming, according to how the winemaker conducts the process.
Your values change according to the process of reflection—the grapes mature into wine through fun chemical reactions.
From what you wrote, it feels like you are mostly considering your ‘first-order values’. However, you have an updating process that you also have values about. Like that I wouldn’t respect simple mind control that alters my first-order values, because my values consider mind-control as disallowed.
Similar to why I wouldn’t take a very potent drug even if I know my first-order values would rank the feeling very highly, because I don’t endorse that specific sort of change.
I have never eaten escamoles. If I try them, what I will discover is what they are like to eat. If I like them, did I always like them? That is an unheard-falling-trees question.
Then we should split the question.
Do you have a value for escamoles specifically before eating them? No.
Do you have a system of thought (of updating your values) that would ~always result in liking escamoles? Well, no in full generality. You might end up with some disease that affects your tastebuds permanently. But in some reasonably large class of normal scenarios, your values would consistently update in a way that would end up liking escamoles were you to ever eat them.
(But really, the value for escamoles is more instrumental of a value for [insert escamole flavor, texture, etc.] here, that the escamoles are learned to be a good instance of.)
What johnwentworth mentions would then be the question of “Would this approved process of updating my values converge to anything”; or tend to in some reasonable reference class; or at least have some guaranteed properties that aren’t freely varying.
I don’t think he is arguing that the values are necessarily fixed and always persistent (I certainly don’t always handle my values according to my professed beliefs about how I should updatethem), but that they’re constrained. That the brain also models them as reasonably constrained, and that you can learn important properties of them.
Your values change according to the process of reflection—the grapes mature into wine through fun chemical reactions.
From what you wrote, it feels like you are mostly considering your ‘first-order values’. However, you have an updating process that you also have values about. Like that I wouldn’t respect simple mind control that alters my first-order values, because my values consider mind-control as disallowed. Similar to why I wouldn’t take a very potent drug even if I know my first-order values would rank the feeling very highly, because I don’t endorse that specific sort of change.
Then we should split the question. Do you have a value for escamoles specifically before eating them? No. Do you have a system of thought (of updating your values) that would ~always result in liking escamoles? Well, no in full generality. You might end up with some disease that affects your tastebuds permanently. But in some reasonably large class of normal scenarios, your values would consistently update in a way that would end up liking escamoles were you to ever eat them. (But really, the value for escamoles is more instrumental of a value for [insert escamole flavor, texture, etc.] here, that the escamoles are learned to be a good instance of.)
What johnwentworth mentions would then be the question of “Would this approved process of updating my values converge to anything”; or tend to in some reasonable reference class; or at least have some guaranteed properties that aren’t freely varying. I don’t think he is arguing that the values are necessarily fixed and always persistent (I certainly don’t always handle my values according to my professed beliefs about how I should updatethem), but that they’re constrained. That the brain also models them as reasonably constrained, and that you can learn important properties of them.