i value moral patients everywhere having freedom, being diverse, engaging in art and other culture, not undergoing excessive unconsented suffering, in general having a good time, and probly other things as well. but those are all pretty abstract; given those values being satisfied to the same extent, i’d still prefer me and my friends and my home planet (and everyone who’s been on it) having access to that utopia rather than not. this value, the value of not just getting an abstractly good future but also getting me and my friends and my culture and my fellow earth-inhabitants to live in it, my friend Prism coined as “nostalgia”.
not that those abstract values are simple or robust, they’re still plausibly not. but they’re, in a sense, broader values about what happens everywhere, and they’re not as much local and pointed at and around me. they could be the difference between what i’d call “global” and “personal” values, or perhaps between “global values” and “preferences”.
(cross-posted from my blog)
nostalgia: a value pointing home
i value moral patients everywhere having freedom, being diverse, engaging in art and other culture, not undergoing excessive unconsented suffering, in general having a good time, and probly other things as well. but those are all pretty abstract; given those values being satisfied to the same extent, i’d still prefer me and my friends and my home planet (and everyone who’s been on it) having access to that utopia rather than not. this value, the value of not just getting an abstractly good future but also getting me and my friends and my culture and my fellow earth-inhabitants to live in it, my friend Prism coined as “nostalgia”.
not that those abstract values are simple or robust, they’re still plausibly not. but they’re, in a sense, broader values about what happens everywhere, and they’re not as much local and pointed at and around me. they could be the difference between what i’d call “global” and “personal” values, or perhaps between “global values” and “preferences”.