One is that this isn’t a real value change. You gained the ability to appreciate sex as a source of pleasures, both lower and higher. As a child you already valued physical pleasure and social connections. Likewise, just as the invention of pianos allowed us to develop appreciations for things our ancestors never could, future technology will allow our descendants, we imagine, to find new sources of pleasure, higher and lower. And few people think this is bad in itself.
The more fundamental problem with the analogy—or rather, the question that followed it—is that it asks the question from the perspective of the adult rather than the child. Of course if our descendants have radically different values, then unless their ability to alter their environment has been drastically reduced, the world they create will be much better, from their perspective, than ours is. But the perspective we care about is our own—in the future generations case, we’re the child.
Consider a young law student at a prestigious school who, like many young law students, is passionate about social justice and public service. She looks at the legal profession and notices that a great deal of lawyers, especially elite lawyers, don’t seem to care about this to the extent that her age-mates do—after all, there are just as many of them fighting for the bad guys as the good guys, and so on and so on. Suppose for the sake of argument that she’s right to conclude that as they get socialized into the legal profession, and start earning very high incomes, and begin to hobknob with the rich and powerful, their values start changing such that they care about protecting privilege rather than challenging it, and earning gobs of money rather than fighting what she would see as the good fight. And suppose further that she sees, accurately, that these corrupted lawyers are quite happy—they genuinely do enjoy what their work, and have changed their politics so that they genuinely do get even moral satisfaction from it. And suppose she sees that she’s not, in any measurable respect, different from all those other young idealistic law students that turn into old wicked lawyers—aside, perhaps, from coming to evaluate just these facts.
Is it rational, given her values and assuming her conclusions above are true, for her to take (costly, but not catastrophically costly) steps to not become corrupted in this way? After all, if she is corrupted, her future self won’t consider herself worse off—in fact, she’ll look back at her youthful naivete thank her lucky stars that she shed all that!
By even considering how lawyers observably change, it would seem that our idealistic young law student is already infected with the memplex of perspective. Nevertheless, nigh tautologically, the future offers new perspectives as yet unappreciated. After all, as for any question of memetic self preservation of integrity, you have it simply given as premise, that the greedy future lawyers are entirely honest with themselves. Actually, memes only exist in context of their medium, being culture, an ongoing conscious and social phenomena that governs even Axiology.
I would consider valuing sex a real value change. Just as I would consider valuing heroin more than just a new source of pleasure. I used to smoke, and the quitting process has convinced me that it wasn’t just another source of pleasure, it was a fundamental value shift.
I know this wasn’t clear in my original comment, but my question was not entirely rhetorical. It was during the quitting ordeal that this thought first occurred to me, and occasionally I still puzzle over it. It is not obviously clear to me that I’m better off liking sex than I was back when I was a child and disinterested. And arguments to the contrary seem too much like rationalization.
But in answer to your question—it seems rational on the surface. If her present and future selves are in direct competition for existence, she should obviously spend resources in support of her present self. If nothing else, at least her future self doesn’t yet have any desires that can be thwarted.
I was more trying to say that I suspect complete value ossification is not a good thing.
There are two things wrong with this analogy.
One is that this isn’t a real value change. You gained the ability to appreciate sex as a source of pleasures, both lower and higher. As a child you already valued physical pleasure and social connections. Likewise, just as the invention of pianos allowed us to develop appreciations for things our ancestors never could, future technology will allow our descendants, we imagine, to find new sources of pleasure, higher and lower. And few people think this is bad in itself.
The more fundamental problem with the analogy—or rather, the question that followed it—is that it asks the question from the perspective of the adult rather than the child. Of course if our descendants have radically different values, then unless their ability to alter their environment has been drastically reduced, the world they create will be much better, from their perspective, than ours is. But the perspective we care about is our own—in the future generations case, we’re the child.
Consider a young law student at a prestigious school who, like many young law students, is passionate about social justice and public service. She looks at the legal profession and notices that a great deal of lawyers, especially elite lawyers, don’t seem to care about this to the extent that her age-mates do—after all, there are just as many of them fighting for the bad guys as the good guys, and so on and so on. Suppose for the sake of argument that she’s right to conclude that as they get socialized into the legal profession, and start earning very high incomes, and begin to hobknob with the rich and powerful, their values start changing such that they care about protecting privilege rather than challenging it, and earning gobs of money rather than fighting what she would see as the good fight. And suppose further that she sees, accurately, that these corrupted lawyers are quite happy—they genuinely do enjoy what their work, and have changed their politics so that they genuinely do get even moral satisfaction from it. And suppose she sees that she’s not, in any measurable respect, different from all those other young idealistic law students that turn into old wicked lawyers—aside, perhaps, from coming to evaluate just these facts.
Is it rational, given her values and assuming her conclusions above are true, for her to take (costly, but not catastrophically costly) steps to not become corrupted in this way? After all, if she is corrupted, her future self won’t consider herself worse off—in fact, she’ll look back at her youthful naivete thank her lucky stars that she shed all that!
By even considering how lawyers observably change, it would seem that our idealistic young law student is already infected with the memplex of perspective. Nevertheless, nigh tautologically, the future offers new perspectives as yet unappreciated. After all, as for any question of memetic self preservation of integrity, you have it simply given as premise, that the greedy future lawyers are entirely honest with themselves. Actually, memes only exist in context of their medium, being culture, an ongoing conscious and social phenomena that governs even Axiology.
I would consider valuing sex a real value change. Just as I would consider valuing heroin more than just a new source of pleasure. I used to smoke, and the quitting process has convinced me that it wasn’t just another source of pleasure, it was a fundamental value shift.
I know this wasn’t clear in my original comment, but my question was not entirely rhetorical. It was during the quitting ordeal that this thought first occurred to me, and occasionally I still puzzle over it. It is not obviously clear to me that I’m better off liking sex than I was back when I was a child and disinterested. And arguments to the contrary seem too much like rationalization.
But in answer to your question—it seems rational on the surface. If her present and future selves are in direct competition for existence, she should obviously spend resources in support of her present self. If nothing else, at least her future self doesn’t yet have any desires that can be thwarted.
I was more trying to say that I suspect complete value ossification is not a good thing.