The question of value drift is especially strange given that we have a “meta-intuition” that moral/social values evolving and changing is good in human history. BUT, at the same time, we know from historical precedent that we ourselves will not approve of the value changes. One might attempt to square the circle here by arguing that perhaps if we were, hypothetically, able to see and evaluate future changed values, that we would in reflective equilibrium accept these new values. Sadly, from what I can gather this is just not borne out by the social science: when it comes to questions of value drift, society advances by the deaths of the old-value-havers and the maturation of a next generation with “new” values.
I feel like this is sweeping a bit under the rug. First, there’s a reason why there are people who label themselves politically as “conservatives”—some people do think that our current values are just fine and should, in fact, be preserved unchanged forever! Some even want to go back to previous values (however impractical and unfeasible that tends to be; usually what it happens is that you make up some new thing that is merely a bastardised modern caricature of the old values). As far as people who instead want the values to change go, they usually have an idea of a good direction for them to change—usually they’re people who are far from the median of society and so they would like society to become more like them.
Of course push far enough in the future and all ideology might seem entirely incomprehensible to us. I don’t really have a clean answer for what we should think of that, except that maybe it’s a big discounting factor on longtermist thinking (after all, suppose that all humans from 500,000 years hence have agreed that slavery is fine and genociding aliens is desirable—should we feel particularly proud of ensuring there’s more of those people around?).
As far as people who instead want the values to change go, they usually have an idea of a good direction for them to change—usually they’re people who are far from the median of society and so they would like society to become more like them.
I have in mind another conjecture: even median humans value humans with values that are, in their minds, at least as moral as median humans, and ideally[1] more moral.
On the other hand, I have seen conservatives building cases for SOTA liberal values being damaging to the minds or outright incompatible with sustaining the civilisation (e.g. a too big part of Gen Z women being against motherhood). In the past, if some twisted moral reflection led to destructive values, then the values were likely to be outcompeted.
The third option is a group of humans forsibly establishing their values[2]versus another system of values compatible with progress is considered amoral.
So I think that people are likely to value the future with values which keep the civilisation afloat and can be accepted upon thorough reflection on how the values were reached and on the values’ consequences.
The degree of extra morality which humans value can vary between cultures. For example, we less value the reasons which caused people to enter monasteries, but not the acts like sustaining knowledge.
I feel like this is sweeping a bit under the rug. First, there’s a reason why there are people who label themselves politically as “conservatives”—some people do think that our current values are just fine and should, in fact, be preserved unchanged forever! Some even want to go back to previous values (however impractical and unfeasible that tends to be; usually what it happens is that you make up some new thing that is merely a bastardised modern caricature of the old values). As far as people who instead want the values to change go, they usually have an idea of a good direction for them to change—usually they’re people who are far from the median of society and so they would like society to become more like them.
Of course push far enough in the future and all ideology might seem entirely incomprehensible to us. I don’t really have a clean answer for what we should think of that, except that maybe it’s a big discounting factor on longtermist thinking (after all, suppose that all humans from 500,000 years hence have agreed that slavery is fine and genociding aliens is desirable—should we feel particularly proud of ensuring there’s more of those people around?).
I have in mind another conjecture: even median humans value humans with values that are, in their minds, at least as moral as median humans, and ideally[1] more moral.
On the other hand, I have seen conservatives building cases for SOTA liberal values being damaging to the minds or outright incompatible with sustaining the civilisation (e.g. a too big part of Gen Z women being against motherhood). In the past, if some twisted moral reflection led to destructive values, then the values were likely to be outcompeted.
The third option is a group of humans forsibly establishing their values[2] versus another system of values compatible with progress is considered amoral.
So I think that people are likely to value the future with values which keep the civilisation afloat and can be accepted upon thorough reflection on how the values were reached and on the values’ consequences.
The degree of extra morality which humans value can vary between cultures. For example, we less value the reasons which caused people to enter monasteries, but not the acts like sustaining knowledge.
Or values that they would like others to follow, but in this case the group is far easier to denounce as manipulators.