I don’t disagree with maximally efficient altruism, just with the idea that it’s sensible to judge entertainment only as an instrumental value in service of productivity.
As I said in previous comments, I am genuinely not sure whether entertainment is a good terminal goal to have.
By analogy, I absolutely require sleep in order to be productive at all in any capacity; but if I could swallow a magic pill that removed my need for sleep (with no other side-effects), I’d do so in a heartbeat. Sleep is an instrumental goal for me, not a terminal one. But I don’t know if entertainment is like that or not.
Thus, I’m really interested in hearing more about your thoughts on the topic.
I’m not sure that I would regard entertainment as a terminal goal, but I’m very sure I wouldn’t regard productivity as one. As an instrumental goal, it’s an intermediary between a lot of things that I care about, but optimizing for productivity seems like about as worthy a goal to me as paperclipping.
Right, agreed, but “productivity” is just a rough estimate of how quickly you’re moving towards your actual goals. If entertainment is not one of them, then either it enhances your productivity in some way, or it reduces it, or it has no effect (which is unlikely, IMO).
Productivity and fun aren’t orthogonal; for example, it is entirely possible that if your goal is “experience as much pleasure as possible”, then some amount of entertainment would directly contribute to the goal, and would thus be productive. That said, though, I can’t claim that such a goal would be a good goal to have in the first place.
As I said in previous comments, I am genuinely not sure whether entertainment is a good terminal goal to have.
By analogy, I absolutely require sleep in order to be productive at all in any capacity; but if I could swallow a magic pill that removed my need for sleep (with no other side-effects), I’d do so in a heartbeat. Sleep is an instrumental goal for me, not a terminal one. But I don’t know if entertainment is like that or not.
Thus, I’m really interested in hearing more about your thoughts on the topic.
I’m not sure that I would regard entertainment as a terminal goal, but I’m very sure I wouldn’t regard productivity as one. As an instrumental goal, it’s an intermediary between a lot of things that I care about, but optimizing for productivity seems like about as worthy a goal to me as paperclipping.
Right, agreed, but “productivity” is just a rough estimate of how quickly you’re moving towards your actual goals. If entertainment is not one of them, then either it enhances your productivity in some way, or it reduces it, or it has no effect (which is unlikely, IMO).
Productivity and fun aren’t orthogonal; for example, it is entirely possible that if your goal is “experience as much pleasure as possible”, then some amount of entertainment would directly contribute to the goal, and would thus be productive. That said, though, I can’t claim that such a goal would be a good goal to have in the first place.