I feel like you’re rejecting the instrumental value of Green based on a particular story you’ve invented about why green might be instrumentally valuable.
But … IDK, it seems to me like a lot of the value of Green relates to being a boundedly rational actor, in a world with other minds. When I envision a world with a bunch of actors who appreciate Green and try to stay connected to that in their actions, I think they’re less likely to fuck it up than a world with the same actors who otherwise disregard green. I think they’re more likely to respect Chesterton’s fences (and not cause unilateralist’s curse type catastrophes), and they’re more likely to act in ways which provide good interfaces for other people and make it easy for others to have justified trust in what’s happening.
If I imagine instead a single actor in an otherwise mindless universe, I much less have the feeling that things will go better if they appreciate Green.
Indeed, to go a little meta and a little speculative: it kind of feels like you’re making an epistemic error in this comment which I could round off as “too much Deep Atheism / lack of Green”: I don’t see a respect for the possibility that other minds, in liking Green, might be latching onto something which is deeper than what you’re perceiving it as; instead assuming that the hypothesis you thought of is the only one worth considering.
But this isn’t how Green would see Green? A justification rooted in Blue and Black instrumental motives is not what’s going on. To the extent that I get something I like from Green, it’s the extent that I think they are instrumentally useful—as one of the other colors would see it. For example, I wouldn’t wantonly cut down a rare big tree, but only for the same reason I don’t make big irreversible decisions regarding rare artifacts without careful consideration. It’s like dropping a quest item in a videogame to me.
If there’s some reason I should take on Green’s actual justifications, I don’t think the post really explained it—I simply aren’t compelled by the feeling that the tree should be respected, if I have some feeling in the Green direction that isn’t just instrumental then it’s very small. Telling me that some people have some feelings they can’t justify about why the tree should be respected, that isn’t about instrumental utility for beings that have qualia… is not very convincing.
I think it’s easy to locally adopt bits of Greenish perspective when one can see how they would be instrumentally useful.
The claim I’m making is that it’s often a good idea to adopt bits of Greenish perspective even when you can’t see how they would be instrumentally useful—because a reasonable chunk of the time they will be instrumentally useful and you just can’t see it yet.
I don’t think that requires adopting Green’s justifications as terminal, but it does require you to adopt some generator-of-Greenish-perspective that isn’t just “Blue led me to a Greenish conclusion in this particular case”.
I feel like you’re rejecting the instrumental value of Green based on a particular story you’ve invented about why green might be instrumentally valuable.
But … IDK, it seems to me like a lot of the value of Green relates to being a boundedly rational actor, in a world with other minds. When I envision a world with a bunch of actors who appreciate Green and try to stay connected to that in their actions, I think they’re less likely to fuck it up than a world with the same actors who otherwise disregard green. I think they’re more likely to respect Chesterton’s fences (and not cause unilateralist’s curse type catastrophes), and they’re more likely to act in ways which provide good interfaces for other people and make it easy for others to have justified trust in what’s happening.
If I imagine instead a single actor in an otherwise mindless universe, I much less have the feeling that things will go better if they appreciate Green.
Indeed, to go a little meta and a little speculative: it kind of feels like you’re making an epistemic error in this comment which I could round off as “too much Deep Atheism / lack of Green”: I don’t see a respect for the possibility that other minds, in liking Green, might be latching onto something which is deeper than what you’re perceiving it as; instead assuming that the hypothesis you thought of is the only one worth considering.
But this isn’t how Green would see Green? A justification rooted in Blue and Black instrumental motives is not what’s going on. To the extent that I get something I like from Green, it’s the extent that I think they are instrumentally useful—as one of the other colors would see it. For example, I wouldn’t wantonly cut down a rare big tree, but only for the same reason I don’t make big irreversible decisions regarding rare artifacts without careful consideration. It’s like dropping a quest item in a videogame to me.
If there’s some reason I should take on Green’s actual justifications, I don’t think the post really explained it—I simply aren’t compelled by the feeling that the tree should be respected, if I have some feeling in the Green direction that isn’t just instrumental then it’s very small. Telling me that some people have some feelings they can’t justify about why the tree should be respected, that isn’t about instrumental utility for beings that have qualia… is not very convincing.
I think it’s easy to locally adopt bits of Greenish perspective when one can see how they would be instrumentally useful.
The claim I’m making is that it’s often a good idea to adopt bits of Greenish perspective even when you can’t see how they would be instrumentally useful—because a reasonable chunk of the time they will be instrumentally useful and you just can’t see it yet.
I don’t think that requires adopting Green’s justifications as terminal, but it does require you to adopt some generator-of-Greenish-perspective that isn’t just “Blue led me to a Greenish conclusion in this particular case”.