As I see it, once you accept the idea that we are just a dance of particles (as I do too), then in an important sense ‘all bets are off’. A person comes up with something that works for them and goes with it. You don’t have any really good reason not to become a serial murderer, and no good reason to save the world if you know how. So most of us (?) pick a set of values in line with human moral intuition and what other people pick and and just go back to living. It makes us happiest. I claim you can’t be secretly miserable in an existential-angsty sort of way—there is no deeper reality which supports that. There may be deeper realities we aren’t seeing that we should worry about, but they are all within the scope of values we have chosen. But I’ve certainly had the experience that when I’m feeling bad I get reminded of the dance-of-particles situation and it further bums me out.
I see a decision about killing yourself as (in a way) constructing your future ‘contentment curve’ and seeing if the area above zero is larger than the area below. Rational people who get a painful terminal illness sometimes see lots of negative and that’s where physician-assisted suicide comes in. This is subject to the enormous, hard-to-emphasize-enough cognitive distortion that badly depressed people are terrible at constructing future contentment curves. Then irrreversibility comes in as an argument, and the suggestion that a person should let others help them figure it out too.
This is subject to the enormous, hard-to-emphasize-enough cognitive distortion that badly depressed people are terrible at constructing future contentment curves.
Although I don’t actually think getting reminded of the “dance of particles situation” does “further bum me out”. I’ve understood since I was a kid that values are subjective. It was the thought that my values might be somehow broken by hidden inconsistency that bugged me.
What I was fearing was, if the logic of your values can identify wireheading as “not something I actually want”, then what if that same logic actually extends to everything?
As I see it, once you accept the idea that we are just a dance of particles (as I do too), then in an important sense ‘all bets are off’. A person comes up with something that works for them and goes with it. You don’t have any really good reason not to become a serial murderer, and no good reason to save the world if you know how. So most of us (?) pick a set of values in line with human moral intuition and what other people pick and and just go back to living. It makes us happiest. I claim you can’t be secretly miserable in an existential-angsty sort of way—there is no deeper reality which supports that. There may be deeper realities we aren’t seeing that we should worry about, but they are all within the scope of values we have chosen. But I’ve certainly had the experience that when I’m feeling bad I get reminded of the dance-of-particles situation and it further bums me out.
I see a decision about killing yourself as (in a way) constructing your future ‘contentment curve’ and seeing if the area above zero is larger than the area below. Rational people who get a painful terminal illness sometimes see lots of negative and that’s where physician-assisted suicide comes in. This is subject to the enormous, hard-to-emphasize-enough cognitive distortion that badly depressed people are terrible at constructing future contentment curves. Then irrreversibility comes in as an argument, and the suggestion that a person should let others help them figure it out too.
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Especially:
Although I don’t actually think getting reminded of the “dance of particles situation” does “further bum me out”. I’ve understood since I was a kid that values are subjective. It was the thought that my values might be somehow broken by hidden inconsistency that bugged me.
What I was fearing was, if the logic of your values can identify wireheading as “not something I actually want”, then what if that same logic actually extends to everything?