I don’t think this was random value drift, I think that I always had the potential to love horror movies and would have loved them sooner if I’d had the guts to sit down and watch them.
I had a somewhat similar experience growing up, although a few details are different (I never thought people should be banned from making such films or that they were evil things just because they scared me, for instance, and I made the decision to try watching some of them, mostly Alien and a few other works from the same general milieu, at a much younger age and for substantially different reasons). However, I didn’t wind up loving horror movies; I wound up liking one or two films that only pushed my buttons in nice, predictable places and without actually squicking me per se. I honestly still don’t get how someone can sit through films like Halloween or Friday the 13th—I mean, I get the narrative underpinnings and some of the psychological buttons they push very well (reminds me of ghost tales and other things from my youth), but I can’t actually feel the same way as your putative “normal person” when sitting through it. Even movies most people consider “very tame” or “not actually scary” make me too uncomfortable to want to sit through them, a good portion of the time. And I’ve actively tried to cultivate this, not for its own sake (I could go my whole life never sitting through such a film again and not be deprived, even one of the ones I’ve enjoyed many times) but because of the small but notable handful of horror-themed movies that I do like and the number of people I know who enjoy such films with whom I’d have even more social-yay if I did self-modify to enjoy those movies. It simply didn’t take—after much exposure and effort, I now find most such films both squicky and actively uninteresting. I can see why other people like ’em, but I can’t relate.
Are my terminal values “insufficiently extrapolated?” Or just not coherent with yours?
Are my terminal values “insufficiently extrapolated?” Or just not coherent with yours?
I don’t think it’s either. We both have the general value, “experience interesting stories,” it’s just expressed in slightly different ways. I don’t think that really really specific preferences for art consumption would be something that CEV extrapolates. I think CEV is meant to figure out what general things humans value, not really specific things (i.e. a CEV might say, “you want to experience fun adventure stories,” it would not say “read Green Lantern #26” or “read King Solomon’s Mines”). The impression I get is that CEV is more about general things like “How should we treat others?” and “How much effort should we devote to liking activities vs. approving ones?”
I don’t think our values are incoherent, you don’t want to stop me from watching horror movies and I don’t want to make you watch them. In fact, I think a CEV would probably say “It’s good to have many people who like different activities because that makes life more interesting and fun.” Some questions (like “Is it okay to torture people”) likely only have one true, or very few true, CEVs, but others, like matters of personal taste, probably vary from person to person. I think a FAI would probably order everyone not to torture toddlers, but I doubt it would order us all to watch “Animal House” at 9:00pm this coming Friday.
I had a somewhat similar experience growing up, although a few details are different (I never thought people should be banned from making such films or that they were evil things just because they scared me, for instance, and I made the decision to try watching some of them, mostly Alien and a few other works from the same general milieu, at a much younger age and for substantially different reasons). However, I didn’t wind up loving horror movies; I wound up liking one or two films that only pushed my buttons in nice, predictable places and without actually squicking me per se. I honestly still don’t get how someone can sit through films like Halloween or Friday the 13th—I mean, I get the narrative underpinnings and some of the psychological buttons they push very well (reminds me of ghost tales and other things from my youth), but I can’t actually feel the same way as your putative “normal person” when sitting through it. Even movies most people consider “very tame” or “not actually scary” make me too uncomfortable to want to sit through them, a good portion of the time. And I’ve actively tried to cultivate this, not for its own sake (I could go my whole life never sitting through such a film again and not be deprived, even one of the ones I’ve enjoyed many times) but because of the small but notable handful of horror-themed movies that I do like and the number of people I know who enjoy such films with whom I’d have even more social-yay if I did self-modify to enjoy those movies. It simply didn’t take—after much exposure and effort, I now find most such films both squicky and actively uninteresting. I can see why other people like ’em, but I can’t relate.
Are my terminal values “insufficiently extrapolated?” Or just not coherent with yours?
I don’t think it’s either. We both have the general value, “experience interesting stories,” it’s just expressed in slightly different ways. I don’t think that really really specific preferences for art consumption would be something that CEV extrapolates. I think CEV is meant to figure out what general things humans value, not really specific things (i.e. a CEV might say, “you want to experience fun adventure stories,” it would not say “read Green Lantern #26” or “read King Solomon’s Mines”). The impression I get is that CEV is more about general things like “How should we treat others?” and “How much effort should we devote to liking activities vs. approving ones?”
I don’t think our values are incoherent, you don’t want to stop me from watching horror movies and I don’t want to make you watch them. In fact, I think a CEV would probably say “It’s good to have many people who like different activities because that makes life more interesting and fun.” Some questions (like “Is it okay to torture people”) likely only have one true, or very few true, CEVs, but others, like matters of personal taste, probably vary from person to person. I think a FAI would probably order everyone not to torture toddlers, but I doubt it would order us all to watch “Animal House” at 9:00pm this coming Friday.