it reveals something about how far apart we are in our intuitions/priors.
Indeed! And it says something about EITHER the unreliability of intuitions beyond run-of-the-mill situations, or about the insane variance in utility functions across people (and likely time). Or both. Really makes for an uncertain basis of any sort of reasoning or decision-making.
I would guess that the difference between .001 percentile happy and 5th percentile happy is larger than the difference between the 5th percentile and 100th percentile.
Wait, what? My guess is exactly the opposite—something like a logistic curve (X being the valence of experience, Y being the valuation), so there’s a huge difference toward the middle or when changing sign, but only minor changes in value toward the tails.
Once again, intuitions are a sketchy thing. In fact, I should acknowledge that I’m well beyond intuition here—I just don’t HAVE intuitions at this level of abstraction. This is my attempt to reconcile my very sparse and untrustworthy intuition samples with some intellectual preferences for regularity. My intuitions are compatible with my belief in declining marginal value, but don’t really specify the rest of the shape. It could easily be closer to a pure logarithm—X axis from 0 (absolute worst possible experience) to infinity (progressively better experiences with no upper limit), with simple declining marginal value.
And it says something about EITHER the unreliability of intuitions beyond run-of-the-mill situations, or about the insane variance in utility functions across people (and likely time)
I don’t think it’s really all that complicated, I suspect that you haven’t experienced a certain extent of negative valence which would be sufficient to update you towards understanding how bad suffering can get.
It would be like if you’ve never smelled anything worse than a fart, and you’re trying to gauge the mass of value of positive smells against the mass of value of negative smells. If you were trying to estimate what it would be like in a small room full of decaying dead animals and ammonia, or how long you’d willingly stay in that room, your intuitions would completely fail you.
but only minor changes in value toward the tails.
I have experienced qualia that is just slightly net negative, feeling like non-existence would be preferable all else equal. Then I’ve experienced states of qualia that are immensely worse than that. The distance between those two states is certainly far greater than the distance between neutral and extreme pleasure/fulfillment/euphoria etc. Suffering can just keep getting worse and worse far beyond the point at which all you can desire is to cease existing.
Yeah, I think I’m bowing out at this point. I don’t disagree that my suffering has been pretty minor in the scheme of things, but that’s kind of my whole point: everyone’s range of experiences is unique and incommunicable. Or at least mine is.
Indeed! And it says something about EITHER the unreliability of intuitions beyond run-of-the-mill situations, or about the insane variance in utility functions across people (and likely time). Or both. Really makes for an uncertain basis of any sort of reasoning or decision-making.
Wait, what? My guess is exactly the opposite—something like a logistic curve (X being the valence of experience, Y being the valuation), so there’s a huge difference toward the middle or when changing sign, but only minor changes in value toward the tails.
Once again, intuitions are a sketchy thing. In fact, I should acknowledge that I’m well beyond intuition here—I just don’t HAVE intuitions at this level of abstraction. This is my attempt to reconcile my very sparse and untrustworthy intuition samples with some intellectual preferences for regularity. My intuitions are compatible with my belief in declining marginal value, but don’t really specify the rest of the shape. It could easily be closer to a pure logarithm—X axis from 0 (absolute worst possible experience) to infinity (progressively better experiences with no upper limit), with simple declining marginal value.
I don’t think it’s really all that complicated, I suspect that you haven’t experienced a certain extent of negative valence which would be sufficient to update you towards understanding how bad suffering can get.
It would be like if you’ve never smelled anything worse than a fart, and you’re trying to gauge the mass of value of positive smells against the mass of value of negative smells. If you were trying to estimate what it would be like in a small room full of decaying dead animals and ammonia, or how long you’d willingly stay in that room, your intuitions would completely fail you.
I have experienced qualia that is just slightly net negative, feeling like non-existence would be preferable all else equal. Then I’ve experienced states of qualia that are immensely worse than that. The distance between those two states is certainly far greater than the distance between neutral and extreme pleasure/fulfillment/euphoria etc. Suffering can just keep getting worse and worse far beyond the point at which all you can desire is to cease existing.
Yeah, I think I’m bowing out at this point. I don’t disagree that my suffering has been pretty minor in the scheme of things, but that’s kind of my whole point: everyone’s range of experiences is unique and incommunicable. Or at least mine is.