More generally, if we did have such a delicate goal, it would be the case that if we learned that a particular thing had happened at any point in the past in our universe, that entire universe would be partially ruined for us forever. That just doesn’t sound realistic.
It does sound realistic given how much we disvalue extreme suffering, and how much we regret events like the Holocaust (even still acknowledging that we need to look forward, it is still better for the future to be improved, we still have the potential to do so, etc.).
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. If you meant “learning this past thing is qualitatively different to any positive thing we could implement going forward”, then I agree this doesn’t seem to be the case. But if you just meant “our utility would be heavily negative, because part of the universe has been devoted to that thing”, then I do think it’s actually the case for most humans’ revealed preferences. Like, everything just continues to add up into the same quantitative utility basket (instead of being qualitatively different), but maybe that past negative sum was so large that it’s very difficult in our universe to overpower it.
It does sound realistic given how much we disvalue extreme suffering, and how much we regret events like the Holocaust (even still acknowledging that we need to look forward, it is still better for the future to be improved, we still have the potential to do so, etc.).
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. If you meant “learning this past thing is qualitatively different to any positive thing we could implement going forward”, then I agree this doesn’t seem to be the case. But if you just meant “our utility would be heavily negative, because part of the universe has been devoted to that thing”, then I do think it’s actually the case for most humans’ revealed preferences. Like, everything just continues to add up into the same quantitative utility basket (instead of being qualitatively different), but maybe that past negative sum was so large that it’s very difficult in our universe to overpower it.