Disvalue via interpersonal expected value and probability
My deontologist friend just told me that treating people like investments is no way to live. The benefits of living by that take are that your commitments are more binding, you actually do factor out uncertainty, because when you treat people like investments you always think “well someday I’ll no longer be creating value for this person and they’ll drop me from their life”. It’s hard to make long term plans, living like that.
I’ve kept friends around out of loyalty to what we shared 5-10 years ago while questioning an expected value theory or probability theory based value prop. So I’m not, like, super guilty of this or anything. But overall I do take expected value theory and probability theory into interpersonal matters, and I don’t object when others do the same for me. Though it’s hard sometimes, I think it’s basically fine if someone drops me because I’m not adding value for them. An edge case in the opposite direction is that you’re obligated to build deep friendships with every acquaintance, which is also a little silly. But a sweet spot, like a marriage or other way of teaming up (like for a project) might meaningfully call for a suspension of expected value theory and probability theory.
One thing to be careful about in such decisions—you don’t know your own utility function very precisely, and your modeling of both future interactions and your value from such are EXTREMELY lossy.
The best argument for deontological approaches is that you’re running on very corrupt hardware, and rules that have evolved and been tested over a long period of time are far more trustworthy than your ad-hoc analysis which privileges obvious visible artifacts over more subtle (but often more important) considerations.
Disvalue via interpersonal expected value and probability
My deontologist friend just told me that treating people like investments is no way to live. The benefits of living by that take are that your commitments are more binding, you actually do factor out uncertainty, because when you treat people like investments you always think “well someday I’ll no longer be creating value for this person and they’ll drop me from their life”. It’s hard to make long term plans, living like that.
I’ve kept friends around out of loyalty to what we shared 5-10 years ago while questioning an expected value theory or probability theory based value prop. So I’m not, like, super guilty of this or anything. But overall I do take expected value theory and probability theory into interpersonal matters, and I don’t object when others do the same for me. Though it’s hard sometimes, I think it’s basically fine if someone drops me because I’m not adding value for them. An edge case in the opposite direction is that you’re obligated to build deep friendships with every acquaintance, which is also a little silly. But a sweet spot, like a marriage or other way of teaming up (like for a project) might meaningfully call for a suspension of expected value theory and probability theory.
One thing to be careful about in such decisions—you don’t know your own utility function very precisely, and your modeling of both future interactions and your value from such are EXTREMELY lossy.
The best argument for deontological approaches is that you’re running on very corrupt hardware, and rules that have evolved and been tested over a long period of time are far more trustworthy than your ad-hoc analysis which privileges obvious visible artifacts over more subtle (but often more important) considerations.