The desire to have done something, in the absence of the desire to actually do it, is an interesting phenomenon. I find that in my case it most often applies to travel, which I hate, although I desire to have been to places I would need to travel to in order to have visited. We have to juggle the wants of self-at-t1-for-self-at-t1 with the wants of self-at-t2-for-self-at-t1. It’s like procrastination, except that instead of forming an intention to do something later, one dissolves the intention to do it at all.
I find that in my case it most often applies to travel, which I hate, although I
desire to have been to places I would need to travel to in order to have visited.
That sounds entirely rational—presumably your objection to going to those places would disappear if teleportation became an option?
Yes, if I could teleport, I’d certainly travel more—but I don’t think I would travel to all of the places I would like to have been, since I’d still have to do other things I don’t like about traveling, like packing and dealing with language gaps and setting aside time to be at the place, even if travel time is negligible. In all likelihood, teleportation wouldn’t be free, either.
Yes, and if there was a utility lever that you could pull to gain utility, you would spend your entire life pulling the lever. But there isn’t. And you cannot teleport, nor will you be able to in the foreseeable future. So Alicorn will have to continue taking the burden of travel into account when deciding whether or not to visit a place he would like to have visited.
The desire to have done something, in the absence of the desire to actually do it, is an interesting phenomenon. I find that in my case it most often applies to travel, which I hate, although I desire to have been to places I would need to travel to in order to have visited. We have to juggle the wants of self-at-t1-for-self-at-t1 with the wants of self-at-t2-for-self-at-t1. It’s like procrastination, except that instead of forming an intention to do something later, one dissolves the intention to do it at all.
It can also be a heuristic to avoid akrasia maybe.
Like Mark Twain’s definition of a classic: “Something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
That sounds entirely rational—presumably your objection to going to those places would disappear if teleportation became an option?
Yes, if I could teleport, I’d certainly travel more—but I don’t think I would travel to all of the places I would like to have been, since I’d still have to do other things I don’t like about traveling, like packing and dealing with language gaps and setting aside time to be at the place, even if travel time is negligible. In all likelihood, teleportation wouldn’t be free, either.
If you could teleport, you wouldn’t need to pack, or book a hotel for that matter...
Yes, and if there was a utility lever that you could pull to gain utility, you would spend your entire life pulling the lever. But there isn’t. And you cannot teleport, nor will you be able to in the foreseeable future. So Alicorn will have to continue taking the burden of travel into account when deciding whether or not to visit a place he would like to have visited.