Yeah, I actually agree with that. I can spend a lifetime studying interesting things, and there will always be interesting things in the artificial world that I can study. Yet (this is just for me), there are few other things that can amaze me as much as parts of the biological world do.
The other thing I think about is this—what exactly is the stability of my terminal values? I’ve changed many of my terminal values over time, when I realized that I’d be happier without certain terminal values (e.g., deep ecology used to be one of my terminal values, but then I realized it was philosophically flawed).
If biodiversity got destroyed, I’d imagine that a number of people with biodiversity as a terminal value would also force themselves to adapt.
Deep ecology, in itself, entails that you value (some metric of biology) as a terminal value. Since I no longer believe in it, my terminal value for it did change.
It’s sort of like this: if a religious person had his religion (God) as a terminal value, but his God was then definitively proved not to exist, then he would have to change his terminal values too
Is there anything about terminal values that means they are immutable? What’s wrong with valuing something for its own sake, and then later changing your mind?
Biodiversity is interesting, and interestingness is something like a terminal value to me.
Just because it seems like an obvious question—Why that particular type of “interesting”?
Yeah, I actually agree with that. I can spend a lifetime studying interesting things, and there will always be interesting things in the artificial world that I can study. Yet (this is just for me), there are few other things that can amaze me as much as parts of the biological world do.
The other thing I think about is this—what exactly is the stability of my terminal values? I’ve changed many of my terminal values over time, when I realized that I’d be happier without certain terminal values (e.g., deep ecology used to be one of my terminal values, but then I realized it was philosophically flawed).
If biodiversity got destroyed, I’d imagine that a number of people with biodiversity as a terminal value would also force themselves to adapt.
What you thought your terminal values were changed. Your terminal values didn’t necessarily change.
Deep ecology, in itself, entails that you value (some metric of biology) as a terminal value. Since I no longer believe in it, my terminal value for it did change.
It’s sort of like this: if a religious person had his religion (God) as a terminal value, but his God was then definitively proved not to exist, then he would have to change his terminal values too
Is there anything about terminal values that means they are immutable? What’s wrong with valuing something for its own sake, and then later changing your mind?
well, in the long run, we’re talking about maximizing our utility, which means taking the time-integrated utility function.
so yes true, valuing something for its own sake actually could count even if it’s not permanent.