You strike me as someone very heaven focused, so I am surprised you got off the train at about here.
I wonder, if you expand the concept of “how everyone feels” to include Eudomonic happiness—that is, its’ not just about how they feel, but second order ideas of how they would feel about the meaningfullness/rightness of their own feelings (and how you feel about the meaningfullness/rightfullness of their actions), do you still get off the train?
Yeah, it seems pretty plausible that I care about things that don’t have any experience. It seems likely that I prefer a universe tiled with amazing beautiful paintings but no conscious observers to a universe filled with literal mountains of feces but no conscious observers. I don’t really know how much I prefer one over the other, but if you give me the choice between the two I would definitely choose the first one.
There’s a lot of underlying models here around the “Heaven and Enlightenment” dichotomy that I’ve been playing with. That is, it seems like when introspecting people either same to want to get to a point where everyone feels great, or get to a point where they can feel great/ok/at peace with everyone not feeling great. (Some people are in the middle, and for instance want to create heaven with their proximate tribe or family, and enlightenment around the suffering of the broader world).
One of the things I found out recently that makes me put more weight into the heaven and enlightenment dichotomy is that research into Kegan stage 5 has found there are two types of Kegan stage 5 - people who get really interested in other people and how they feel and how to make them do better (Heaven), and people who get really interested in their own experience and their own body and what’s going on internally (enlightenment). That is, when you’ve discarded all your instrumental values and ontologies as fluid and contextual and open to change and growth, whats’ left is your terminal values—Either heaven, or enlightenment.
I happen to roughly agree with this but be warned that there are people who get off this train right about here.
*raises hand and gets off the train*
You strike me as someone very heaven focused, so I am surprised you got off the train at about here.
I wonder, if you expand the concept of “how everyone feels” to include Eudomonic happiness—that is, its’ not just about how they feel, but second order ideas of how they would feel about the meaningfullness/rightness of their own feelings (and how you feel about the meaningfullness/rightfullness of their actions), do you still get off the train?
Yeah, it seems pretty plausible that I care about things that don’t have any experience. It seems likely that I prefer a universe tiled with amazing beautiful paintings but no conscious observers to a universe filled with literal mountains of feces but no conscious observers. I don’t really know how much I prefer one over the other, but if you give me the choice between the two I would definitely choose the first one.
There’s a lot of underlying models here around the “Heaven and Enlightenment” dichotomy that I’ve been playing with. That is, it seems like when introspecting people either same to want to get to a point where everyone feels great, or get to a point where they can feel great/ok/at peace with everyone not feeling great. (Some people are in the middle, and for instance want to create heaven with their proximate tribe or family, and enlightenment around the suffering of the broader world).
One of the things I found out recently that makes me put more weight into the heaven and enlightenment dichotomy is that research into Kegan stage 5 has found there are two types of Kegan stage 5 - people who get really interested in other people and how they feel and how to make them do better (Heaven), and people who get really interested in their own experience and their own body and what’s going on internally (enlightenment). That is, when you’ve discarded all your instrumental values and ontologies as fluid and contextual and open to change and growth, whats’ left is your terminal values—Either heaven, or enlightenment.