I appreciate your questions and will do my best to clarify.
The values from the section you quoted pertain to civilization as a whole. You are correct that individual motivations/desires/ambitions require other concepts to describe them (see below). I apologize for not making that clear. The “universal values” are instrumental values in a sense, because they describe a civilization in which individuals are more able to pursue their own personal motivations (the terminal values, more or less) without getting stuck.
In other words, the “universal values of civilization” just mean the opposites of the fundamental liabilities. We could put a rationalist taboo on the “values” and simply say, “all civilizations want scarcity, disaster, stagnation, and conflict to not obstruct people’s goals.” They just lose sight of that big-picture vision when they layer a bunch of lower-level instrumental values on top of it. (And to be fair, those layers of values are usually more concrete and immediately practical than “make the liabilities stop interfering with what we want”. It’s just that losing sight of the big picture prevents humanity from making serious efforts to solve big-picture problems.)
Valuing being treated with dignity would typically go under the motivation of idealization, while valuing social status over others could fall under idealization, acquisition, or control. (It’s possible for different people to want the same thing for different reasons. Knowing their motivations helps us predict what other things they will probably also want.)
As for what we can do when people have different priorities, I attempted to explain that in the part describing ethics, and included an example (the neighbors and the trombone). Was there some aspect of that explanation that was unclear or otherwise unsatisfactory? It might be necessary for me to clarify that even though my example was on the level of individuals, the principles of ethics also pertain to conflict on the policy level. I chose an individual example because I wanted to illustrate pure ethics, and most policy conflicts involve other liabilities, which I predicted would confuse people. Does that make more sense?
(Your utopia isn’t here because it’s only easy in hindsight.)
I appreciate your questions and will do my best to clarify.
The values from the section you quoted pertain to civilization as a whole. You are correct that individual motivations/desires/ambitions require other concepts to describe them (see below). I apologize for not making that clear. The “universal values” are instrumental values in a sense, because they describe a civilization in which individuals are more able to pursue their own personal motivations (the terminal values, more or less) without getting stuck.
In other words, the “universal values of civilization” just mean the opposites of the fundamental liabilities. We could put a rationalist taboo on the “values” and simply say, “all civilizations want scarcity, disaster, stagnation, and conflict to not obstruct people’s goals.” They just lose sight of that big-picture vision when they layer a bunch of lower-level instrumental values on top of it. (And to be fair, those layers of values are usually more concrete and immediately practical than “make the liabilities stop interfering with what we want”. It’s just that losing sight of the big picture prevents humanity from making serious efforts to solve big-picture problems.)
The concepts describing the individual motivations are enumerated in this comment, which for brevity’s sake I will link rather than copying: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BLddiDeE6e9ePJEEu/the-village-and-the-river-monsters-or-less-fighting-more?commentId=T7SF6wboFdKBeuoZz. (As a heads up, my use of the word “values” lumps different classes of concept together (motivations, opposites of liabilities, tradeoffs, and constructive principles). I apologize if that lumping makes things unclear; I can clarify if need be.
Valuing being treated with dignity would typically go under the motivation of idealization, while valuing social status over others could fall under idealization, acquisition, or control. (It’s possible for different people to want the same thing for different reasons. Knowing their motivations helps us predict what other things they will probably also want.)
As for what we can do when people have different priorities, I attempted to explain that in the part describing ethics, and included an example (the neighbors and the trombone). Was there some aspect of that explanation that was unclear or otherwise unsatisfactory? It might be necessary for me to clarify that even though my example was on the level of individuals, the principles of ethics also pertain to conflict on the policy level. I chose an individual example because I wanted to illustrate pure ethics, and most policy conflicts involve other liabilities, which I predicted would confuse people. Does that make more sense?
(Your utopia isn’t here because it’s only easy in hindsight.)