Are you unfit? Any background physical (or emotional) discomfort or pain? That can make you blunt everything. You mention that your parents are lazy, for instance. If you really don’t like your parents sometimes the best thing is to just suffer through until you can leave. Maybe try writing down (or just thinking of) a list of reasons to care about stuff you want to care about. But, honest reasons, the kind you would use to honestly convince someone else something was important rather than the kind of thing where you’re writing an essay.
Do people take advantage of your lack of strong preferences? Does that irritate/ piss you off/make you angry? If it does feel free to slide up that scale from irritated to angry (but stop somewhere before psychotically enraged)
Maybe you just don’t have anything you care about. Have you thought about trying martial arts, or something hard like that that can directly show you how some emotional states make certain things easier.
Also, what’s so mere about preferences? What do you think other people have? Imo people are conditioned to care about stuff as much as they can so utilitarians will lend more weight to what they want. I mean, I don’t necessarrilly see a problem. I remember I used to be like this but I later found out the reason I didn’t like things was that I had a back problem, and was in constant physical discomfort/pain. I remember being bored a lot but that was also because its harder to be patient when you’re not comfortable. Without that I don’t see why that way of being is so bad. Maybe there’s some simple technical problem (like someone mentioned earlier, hypothyroidism can cause this for example) which is actually the reason you want out of this state rather than the state of not caring being bad in itself?
Also, does imagining, yourself being tortured elicit a strong reaction. Does imagining someone else being tortured elicit a strong reaction.
Finally, as someone who doesn’t care about much you have the excellent oppurtunity to relatively unbiasedly choose your values, choose what you prefer to prefer. What would you like to prefer? Well, isn’t that your preference, then? Maybe you wont feel it but you can get in the habit of working towards your selected preferences which should reinforce them.
Also, it might reinforce your preferences to call them your your own subjective “good”s, objectively, in the sense that getting utility is by definition (or maybe even THE definition) of good.
Also one more word to look up is dissociation. edit: and schizoidism. You probably aren’t schizoid but it’s kind of similiar so there’s probably something worth learning there.
Also, does imagining, yourself being tortured elicit a strong reaction. Does imagining someone else being tortured elicit a strong reaction.
Imagining myself being tortured elicits a dull squeamishness. Imagining others being tortured usually does nothing, but sometimes when I’m frustrated it makes me feel good. That scares me. I never (or at least rarely) feel the urge to harm someone in real life. Even slightly injuring a fly makes me sad.
Finally, as someone who doesn’t care about much you have the excellent oppurtunity to relatively unbiasedly choose your values, choose what you prefer to prefer.
There is some part of me that is terrified of choosing the “wrong” values. Some part of me still seems to believe in some ultimate objective terminal value. I fear following something I think I value or think I should value but really don’t.
There’s no need to posit some ultimate objective terminal value to explain why you’re terrified of choosing the wrong values.
First of all, if by “choosing the wrong values”, you mean “choosing the wrong terminal values”, then you’re just not making sense, or rather it’s just not clear what you’re trying to communicate. Placing “wrong” next to “terminal values” in a sentence about you choosing what you want your values to be, sounds no different to me than saying, “That ball is square.” I’m not in a position interpret either of those sequences of words.
A course of action can be wrong only by reference to a value. Or to taboo the word “wrong”, a course of action can be incompetent only if you posit a goal the agent is trying to achieve. Driving into a tree at 70 mph is a bad idea for me only because I don’t want to die or get crippled, and I don’t want either of those only because X, and X only because Y, etc., until we reach my terminal value(s). Someone else may be different in this respect.
It’s not possible to choose your terminal values, or rather it just doesn’t even make any sense to say that phrase: “choose your terminal values”. Choosing involves valuing. Once you choose something, you’re choosing it because you think it’s a good way to get something else, but then that something else is by necessity more “terminal” than what you chose. You can’t choose your terminal values; you can only discover them.
With that said, I want to echo the others who mentioned that your situation may be the result of some basic physiological problem or whatever. All too often do people chalk their situation up to their personality, or How Things Are, or something like that, when the situation is extremely malleable, and is no more than the routine, methodical outcome of some basic lifestyle consideration or toxin exposure or whatever.
I’ve been in and out of many states and conditions over my lifetime that felt so urgent, or so profound, or something, but have in the end proven to be nothing more than what I mentioned in the last paragraph: the result of some lame environmental circumstance. For example, depression can be ridiculously severe, and color one’s perception of the world in such an insanely pronounced way, that it seems so out of place to tell them, “Maybe it’s just because you’re not exercising.” But sometimes the solution really is that mundane.
Big effects don’t necessitate big causes. Or more to the point, intense mental states do not require intense events proceeding. As I started off the previous paragraph with, I’ve been in and out of so many of these intense mental states that proved to be lame circuitry misfirings (or whatever), that I have come to take my emotions with a serious grain of salt. I know your mental state isn’t “intense”, so I guess this is starting to sound a little bit centric to my own experiences, but I think the basic message is the same.
Having no values seems like a very boring existence, and Very Boring Existences are undesirable in comparison to exciting ones. This means that you don’t actually have no values, and that saying you have no strong values is nothing more than an idiom. You do have values. So what you must do is figure out how to elicit those values, and maybe there’s some simple physiological problem to blame. Perhaps try improving your lifestyle (e.g., diet, exercise, sleep, toxin avoidance), and/or try getting some sort of basic medical workup where you mention your lack of zest for life and so on?
Hopefully this was somewhat helpful. Good luck, and I hope you stick around Less Wrong!
Are you unfit? Any background physical (or emotional) discomfort or pain? That can make you blunt everything. You mention that your parents are lazy, for instance. If you really don’t like your parents sometimes the best thing is to just suffer through until you can leave. Maybe try writing down (or just thinking of) a list of reasons to care about stuff you want to care about. But, honest reasons, the kind you would use to honestly convince someone else something was important rather than the kind of thing where you’re writing an essay.
Do people take advantage of your lack of strong preferences? Does that irritate/ piss you off/make you angry? If it does feel free to slide up that scale from irritated to angry (but stop somewhere before psychotically enraged)
Maybe you just don’t have anything you care about. Have you thought about trying martial arts, or something hard like that that can directly show you how some emotional states make certain things easier.
Also, what’s so mere about preferences? What do you think other people have? Imo people are conditioned to care about stuff as much as they can so utilitarians will lend more weight to what they want. I mean, I don’t necessarrilly see a problem. I remember I used to be like this but I later found out the reason I didn’t like things was that I had a back problem, and was in constant physical discomfort/pain. I remember being bored a lot but that was also because its harder to be patient when you’re not comfortable. Without that I don’t see why that way of being is so bad. Maybe there’s some simple technical problem (like someone mentioned earlier, hypothyroidism can cause this for example) which is actually the reason you want out of this state rather than the state of not caring being bad in itself?
Also, does imagining, yourself being tortured elicit a strong reaction. Does imagining someone else being tortured elicit a strong reaction.
Finally, as someone who doesn’t care about much you have the excellent oppurtunity to relatively unbiasedly choose your values, choose what you prefer to prefer. What would you like to prefer? Well, isn’t that your preference, then? Maybe you wont feel it but you can get in the habit of working towards your selected preferences which should reinforce them.
Also, it might reinforce your preferences to call them your your own subjective “good”s, objectively, in the sense that getting utility is by definition (or maybe even THE definition) of good.
Also one more word to look up is dissociation. edit: and schizoidism. You probably aren’t schizoid but it’s kind of similiar so there’s probably something worth learning there.
Imagining myself being tortured elicits a dull squeamishness. Imagining others being tortured usually does nothing, but sometimes when I’m frustrated it makes me feel good. That scares me. I never (or at least rarely) feel the urge to harm someone in real life. Even slightly injuring a fly makes me sad.
There is some part of me that is terrified of choosing the “wrong” values. Some part of me still seems to believe in some ultimate objective terminal value. I fear following something I think I value or think I should value but really don’t.
There’s no need to posit some ultimate objective terminal value to explain why you’re terrified of choosing the wrong values.
First of all, if by “choosing the wrong values”, you mean “choosing the wrong terminal values”, then you’re just not making sense, or rather it’s just not clear what you’re trying to communicate. Placing “wrong” next to “terminal values” in a sentence about you choosing what you want your values to be, sounds no different to me than saying, “That ball is square.” I’m not in a position interpret either of those sequences of words.
A course of action can be wrong only by reference to a value. Or to taboo the word “wrong”, a course of action can be incompetent only if you posit a goal the agent is trying to achieve. Driving into a tree at 70 mph is a bad idea for me only because I don’t want to die or get crippled, and I don’t want either of those only because X, and X only because Y, etc., until we reach my terminal value(s). Someone else may be different in this respect.
It’s not possible to choose your terminal values, or rather it just doesn’t even make any sense to say that phrase: “choose your terminal values”. Choosing involves valuing. Once you choose something, you’re choosing it because you think it’s a good way to get something else, but then that something else is by necessity more “terminal” than what you chose. You can’t choose your terminal values; you can only discover them.
With that said, I want to echo the others who mentioned that your situation may be the result of some basic physiological problem or whatever. All too often do people chalk their situation up to their personality, or How Things Are, or something like that, when the situation is extremely malleable, and is no more than the routine, methodical outcome of some basic lifestyle consideration or toxin exposure or whatever.
I’ve been in and out of many states and conditions over my lifetime that felt so urgent, or so profound, or something, but have in the end proven to be nothing more than what I mentioned in the last paragraph: the result of some lame environmental circumstance. For example, depression can be ridiculously severe, and color one’s perception of the world in such an insanely pronounced way, that it seems so out of place to tell them, “Maybe it’s just because you’re not exercising.” But sometimes the solution really is that mundane.
Big effects don’t necessitate big causes. Or more to the point, intense mental states do not require intense events proceeding. As I started off the previous paragraph with, I’ve been in and out of so many of these intense mental states that proved to be lame circuitry misfirings (or whatever), that I have come to take my emotions with a serious grain of salt. I know your mental state isn’t “intense”, so I guess this is starting to sound a little bit centric to my own experiences, but I think the basic message is the same.
Having no values seems like a very boring existence, and Very Boring Existences are undesirable in comparison to exciting ones. This means that you don’t actually have no values, and that saying you have no strong values is nothing more than an idiom. You do have values. So what you must do is figure out how to elicit those values, and maybe there’s some simple physiological problem to blame. Perhaps try improving your lifestyle (e.g., diet, exercise, sleep, toxin avoidance), and/or try getting some sort of basic medical workup where you mention your lack of zest for life and so on?
Hopefully this was somewhat helpful. Good luck, and I hope you stick around Less Wrong!
Thank you, that really helped a lot!
I wrote a short play where I covered similar topics.
Hm. Terror sounds like an emotion to me.
Do you imagine, feel, or fear shame?