To put on my Robin Hanson hat, I’d note that you’re acknowledging this level of selflessness to be a Far value and probably not a Near one.
I have strong sympathies toward privileging Far values over Near ones in many of the cases where they conflict in practice, but it doesn’t seem quite accurate to declare that your Far values are your “true” ones and that the Near ones are to be discarded entirely.
So, I think that the right way to conceptualize this is to say that a given person’s values are not fixed but vary with time. I think that at the moment my true values are as I describe. In the course of being tortured, my true values would be very different from the way they are now.
The reason why I generally priviledge Far values over Near values so much is that I value coherence a great deal and I notice that my Near values are very incoherent. But of course if I were being tortured I would have more urgent concerns than coherence.
The Near/Far distinction is about more than just decisions made under duress or temptation. Far values have a strong signaling component, and they’re subject to their own biases.
Can you give an example of a bias which arises from Far values? I should say that I haven’t actually carefully read Hanson’s posts on Near vs. Far modes. In general I think that Hanson’s views of human nature are very misguided (though closer to the truth than is typical).
Okay, thanks for clarifying. I still haven’t read Robin Hanson on Near vs. Far (nor do I have much interest in doing so) but based on your characterization of Far, I would say that I believe that it’s important to strike a balance between Near vs. Far. I don’t really understand what part of my comment orthogonal is/was objecting to—maybe the issue is linguistic/semantic more than anything else.
To put on my Robin Hanson hat, I’d note that you’re acknowledging this level of selflessness to be a Far value and probably not a Near one.
I have strong sympathies toward privileging Far values over Near ones in many of the cases where they conflict in practice, but it doesn’t seem quite accurate to declare that your Far values are your “true” ones and that the Near ones are to be discarded entirely.
So, I think that the right way to conceptualize this is to say that a given person’s values are not fixed but vary with time. I think that at the moment my true values are as I describe. In the course of being tortured, my true values would be very different from the way they are now.
The reason why I generally priviledge Far values over Near values so much is that I value coherence a great deal and I notice that my Near values are very incoherent. But of course if I were being tortured I would have more urgent concerns than coherence.
The Near/Far distinction is about more than just decisions made under duress or temptation. Far values have a strong signaling component, and they’re subject to their own biases.
Can you give an example of a bias which arises from Far values? I should say that I haven’t actually carefully read Hanson’s posts on Near vs. Far modes. In general I think that Hanson’s views of human nature are very misguided (though closer to the truth than is typical).
Willingness to wreck people’s lives (usually but not always other people’s) for the sake of values which may or may not be well thought out.
This is partly a matter of the signaling aspect, and partly because, since Far values are Far, you’re less likely to be accurate about them.
Okay, thanks for clarifying. I still haven’t read Robin Hanson on Near vs. Far (nor do I have much interest in doing so) but based on your characterization of Far, I would say that I believe that it’s important to strike a balance between Near vs. Far. I don’t really understand what part of my comment orthogonal is/was objecting to—maybe the issue is linguistic/semantic more than anything else.