“If the largest utility you care about is the utility of feeling good about your decision, then any decision that feels good is the right one.”
I don’t think so, Eliezer. Perhaps you’ve misunderstood the argument. It isn’t necessarily “any decision that feels good”, it’s any decision that gets the decider what the decider wants. I was trying to raise a question about your assumptions about what matters. Sometimes, the way you write, it seems you may not be aware that your particular model of what should matter to people isn’t shared by everyone.
I agree that if you think you are playing a particular game, and you want to win that game, there may be very specific things you need to do to win. Where I’m trying to draw your attention is to the fact that human activity encompasses a great number of different games, simultaneously. A rejection of the game you want to play is not the same thing as saying “anything goes.” If you are talking about chess, and someone says “Hey, I play checkers” the proper response is not “Oh, well then it doesn’t matter what move you make. You can make any move.”
It wouldn’t take very much adjustment of your rhetoric to avoid wantonly trampling on the flowerbeds of alternative utility systems. You can be incisive without being mean-spirited.
“If the largest utility you care about is the utility of feeling good about your decision, then any decision that feels good is the right one.”
I don’t think so, Eliezer. Perhaps you’ve misunderstood the argument. It isn’t necessarily “any decision that feels good”, it’s any decision that gets the decider what the decider wants. I was trying to raise a question about your assumptions about what matters. Sometimes, the way you write, it seems you may not be aware that your particular model of what should matter to people isn’t shared by everyone.
I agree that if you think you are playing a particular game, and you want to win that game, there may be very specific things you need to do to win. Where I’m trying to draw your attention is to the fact that human activity encompasses a great number of different games, simultaneously. A rejection of the game you want to play is not the same thing as saying “anything goes.” If you are talking about chess, and someone says “Hey, I play checkers” the proper response is not “Oh, well then it doesn’t matter what move you make. You can make any move.”
It wouldn’t take very much adjustment of your rhetoric to avoid wantonly trampling on the flowerbeds of alternative utility systems. You can be incisive without being mean-spirited.