This kind of thing seems totally backwards to me. In what sense do I lose if I “bulldoze my values”? It only makes sense to describe me as “having values” insofar as I don’t do things like bulldoze them! It seems like a way to pretend existential choices don’t exist—just assume you have a deep true utility function, and then do whatever maximizes it.
Why should I care about “teasing out” my deep values? I place no value on my unknown, latent values at present, and I see no reason to think I should!
You might not value growing and considering your values, but that would make you pretty unusual, I think. Most people think that they have a pretty-good-but-revisable understanding of what it is that they care about; e.g., people come to value life relatively more than they did before after witnessing the death of a family member for the first time. Most people seem open to having their minds changed about what is valuable in the world.
If you’re not like that, and you’re confident about it, then by all means lock in your values now against your future self.
I don’t do that because I think I might be wrong about myself, and think I’ll settle into a better understanding of myself after putting more work into it.
I feel like you say this because you expect your values-upon-reflection to be good by light of your present values—in which case, you’re not so much valuing reflection, as just enacting your current values.
If Omega told me if I reflected enough, I’d realize what I truly wanted was to club baby seals all day, I would take action to avoid ever reflecting that deeply!
It’s not so much that I want to lock in my present values as it is I don’t want to lock in my reflective values. They seem equally arbitrary to me.
This kind of thing seems totally backwards to me. In what sense do I lose if I “bulldoze my values”? It only makes sense to describe me as “having values” insofar as I don’t do things like bulldoze them! It seems like a way to pretend existential choices don’t exist—just assume you have a deep true utility function, and then do whatever maximizes it.
Why should I care about “teasing out” my deep values? I place no value on my unknown, latent values at present, and I see no reason to think I should!
You might not value growing and considering your values, but that would make you pretty unusual, I think. Most people think that they have a pretty-good-but-revisable understanding of what it is that they care about; e.g., people come to value life relatively more than they did before after witnessing the death of a family member for the first time. Most people seem open to having their minds changed about what is valuable in the world.
If you’re not like that, and you’re confident about it, then by all means lock in your values now against your future self.
I don’t do that because I think I might be wrong about myself, and think I’ll settle into a better understanding of myself after putting more work into it.
I feel like you say this because you expect your values-upon-reflection to be good by light of your present values—in which case, you’re not so much valuing reflection, as just enacting your current values.
If Omega told me if I reflected enough, I’d realize what I truly wanted was to club baby seals all day, I would take action to avoid ever reflecting that deeply!
It’s not so much that I want to lock in my present values as it is I don’t want to lock in my reflective values. They seem equally arbitrary to me.