There's another consequentialist path besides hedonism or preference utilitarianism: assigning substantial value to macroexperiences.
The reason mainlining hedonium isn't the most positive life is the same reason why the best music doesn't consist of the best 10-note melody played over and over. The large-scale temporal organization of pleasures and pains creates positive or negative macroexperiences that aren't simple sums of their parts.
That may indeed be the case, but it doesn't *have* to be the case. Macroexperinces are good for obvious evolutionary reasons, like achieving goals. And satiety points exist, for instance, rats will gorge to one point on a particular food and stop, but begin again when the menu changes. A person may watch some grim war movie and be inclined to follow it up with a light comedy. Outside our evolutionary heritage in some transhumanist utopia, there is no reason why the single most consistent, constant, intense and computationally efficent hedonic state shouldn't replace all others.
I agree that that's how hedonism would naturally make sense of pluralist consequentialist examples. But there are likewise obvious evolutionary reasons for momentary, low-complexity "pleasures" and "pains". So I don't see how explaining the compelling pluralist examples descriptively would count as explaining them away normatively, any more than it would for intense momentary endorphin-rush "pleasure".
I don't think satiety points explain the pluralist examples that come most readily to my mind. I intuit, for example, that days spent hiking up a mountain have been excellent days, and that an experience like that would still be very good even if I were to be hit by a bus the following morning and not get to experience the lasting health benefits. And yet, it seems likely that a simple summation of momentary pains and pleasures over that day would reveal either a greater amount of suffering or something close to neutral -- certainly not the watershed of momentary pleasure sensations which would match how highly I evaluate the day as a whole.
Hedonist responses fail to convince me. Biting the bullet with (3) seems least bad:
(1) The time at the top of the mountain was such extreme pleasure that it overwhelmed all the aches and pains. (It sure doesn't seem that way, and also, my behavior doesn't seem to be anything close to maximizing that time.)
(2) Aching muscles and sore feet are actually forms of pleasure. (The No True Scotsman-adjacent move that young aspiring hedonists like to make)
(3) I'm just confused in thinking that hiking up the difficult mountain was a very positive experience, outside of instrumental reasons like health or developing mental discipline, which I probably could have gotten in less painful ways.
Whereas this seems highly intuitive, andnot strongly threatened by hedonist arguments:
(4) The internal structure of the macroexperience "hiking up a mountain to the summit" gives that experience large positive value, via some complex function that's very different from a summation of the momentary pleasures and pains of which it's comprised. (This is a familiar phenomenon, after all. It's the same relationship that holds between novels and sentences, symphonies and melodic lines, romantic relationships and all the diverse moments there.)
Agreed! I'm perhaps a bit different from the stereotypical hedonist that you quite soundly refuted. I actually don't really have an issue with the idea that people can experience these "macroexperinces". *Unless* it's your position that they are causally *dependent* on there being these other, lesser, experiences, such as the pains of climbing the mountain? Because that doesn't seem plausible to me.
It kinda seems like a mixup of folk wisdom with meta ethics. In the "no pain no gain" tradition. Perhaps quite sound folk wisdom. But it's a category mistake to apply it here.
My point with the "evolutionary heritage" stuff is that these human experiences, are highly contingent on processes which don't select for maximizing positively valenced experience. Taking Ayahuasca may be likened to hacking these macroexperinces; and in doing so, demonstrating that they aren't really dependent on climbing any mountains.
If you are still unconvinced at this point, I'm wondering if the crux of our disagreement comes down to differing views of personal identity? Perhaps it is your view that the subject of experiences is some sort of temporally homogenous, unified thing that experiences must accrue in? My position is more the opposite of that - I'd liken experiences to being more like discrete "events" rather than linked chains.
I do think that it's common for low-level negative experiences to play important constitutive roles in positive higher-level experiences, such that removing the former would make the latter less positive, yes. Although this doesn't seem to be what "no pain no gain" is usually about, which is just a contingent fact about how our muscles work. We want larger, stronger muscles for various reasons, but it doesn't seem like we really want the macroexperience of difficult lifting and sore muscles during healing. Better examples are watching a movie or reading a book in which many moment of sadness, fear or anger are crucial to making the overall experience worthwhile (and not in a straightforwardly instrumental way). Or playing sports or games where the tension and worry of possibly losing cannot be removed without greatly diminishing the experience.
I agree entirely with the factual description in your third paragraph. I disagree that sitting on a cushion taking ayahuasca and having a steady stream of positive microexperiences constitutes a better macroexperience than different sorts of macroexperience which involve more complex internal structures of positive and negative moments. It's not generally on evolutionary or neurological facts where pluralistic/eudaemonistic consequentialists disagree with hedonists, after all. :-)
As to the persistence of selves, that's a huge rabbit hole, of course. I consider the "linked chains" of experiences to be very important normatively, and specifically to have emergent properties which can have quite different strength (and sometimes even different valence) from a summation of the momentary experiences. I guess I don't see how this requires a "unitary" self. A typical Parfitian "overlapping threads of strong connectedness" seems perfectly compatible with thinking about normative consequences in long focus. Maybe a self (or at least a sense of self) might not even be necessary at all, so long as there were still some way for the low-level experiences to have the right sort of temporal and causal relationships with one another.
This is great, thanks so much for sharing. I was hoping to attend but I was dealing with health issues all of January and put off the application until the last minute. I didn't realize the application deadline was in the middle of the day, and so I missed it, thinking it was at midnight.
I was considering making a trip to the Bay Area anyway but ultimately decided not to. I hope to attend EA Global London and EA Global Boston in October.
Keep up with the criticisms of Yudkowsky. The dude has a bit of a God complex and a lot of people seem afraid to criticize him too harshly given his lofty status, which is not a healthy aspect of the community. Vigorous criticism is at the foundation of civilizational progress and helps prevent cult-like dynamics in tight-knit social groups.
Values and morality are situated in geography, time, and society, they aren't fixed, and they are almost never shared by the whole community. 'Moral facts' is either a tautology or an oxymoron. I can't decide which, given it's such a peculiar expression.
Why on earth would it be relevant whether something is shared by the whole community? Evolution is objectively correct, even if at not a single point throughout history everyone agreed that it is true.
There's another consequentialist path besides hedonism or preference utilitarianism: assigning substantial value to macroexperiences.
The reason mainlining hedonium isn't the most positive life is the same reason why the best music doesn't consist of the best 10-note melody played over and over. The large-scale temporal organization of pleasures and pains creates positive or negative macroexperiences that aren't simple sums of their parts.
That may indeed be the case, but it doesn't *have* to be the case. Macroexperinces are good for obvious evolutionary reasons, like achieving goals. And satiety points exist, for instance, rats will gorge to one point on a particular food and stop, but begin again when the menu changes. A person may watch some grim war movie and be inclined to follow it up with a light comedy. Outside our evolutionary heritage in some transhumanist utopia, there is no reason why the single most consistent, constant, intense and computationally efficent hedonic state shouldn't replace all others.
I agree that that's how hedonism would naturally make sense of pluralist consequentialist examples. But there are likewise obvious evolutionary reasons for momentary, low-complexity "pleasures" and "pains". So I don't see how explaining the compelling pluralist examples descriptively would count as explaining them away normatively, any more than it would for intense momentary endorphin-rush "pleasure".
I don't think satiety points explain the pluralist examples that come most readily to my mind. I intuit, for example, that days spent hiking up a mountain have been excellent days, and that an experience like that would still be very good even if I were to be hit by a bus the following morning and not get to experience the lasting health benefits. And yet, it seems likely that a simple summation of momentary pains and pleasures over that day would reveal either a greater amount of suffering or something close to neutral -- certainly not the watershed of momentary pleasure sensations which would match how highly I evaluate the day as a whole.
Hedonist responses fail to convince me. Biting the bullet with (3) seems least bad:
(1) The time at the top of the mountain was such extreme pleasure that it overwhelmed all the aches and pains. (It sure doesn't seem that way, and also, my behavior doesn't seem to be anything close to maximizing that time.)
(2) Aching muscles and sore feet are actually forms of pleasure. (The No True Scotsman-adjacent move that young aspiring hedonists like to make)
(3) I'm just confused in thinking that hiking up the difficult mountain was a very positive experience, outside of instrumental reasons like health or developing mental discipline, which I probably could have gotten in less painful ways.
Whereas this seems highly intuitive, andnot strongly threatened by hedonist arguments:
(4) The internal structure of the macroexperience "hiking up a mountain to the summit" gives that experience large positive value, via some complex function that's very different from a summation of the momentary pleasures and pains of which it's comprised. (This is a familiar phenomenon, after all. It's the same relationship that holds between novels and sentences, symphonies and melodic lines, romantic relationships and all the diverse moments there.)
Agreed! I'm perhaps a bit different from the stereotypical hedonist that you quite soundly refuted. I actually don't really have an issue with the idea that people can experience these "macroexperinces". *Unless* it's your position that they are causally *dependent* on there being these other, lesser, experiences, such as the pains of climbing the mountain? Because that doesn't seem plausible to me.
It kinda seems like a mixup of folk wisdom with meta ethics. In the "no pain no gain" tradition. Perhaps quite sound folk wisdom. But it's a category mistake to apply it here.
My point with the "evolutionary heritage" stuff is that these human experiences, are highly contingent on processes which don't select for maximizing positively valenced experience. Taking Ayahuasca may be likened to hacking these macroexperinces; and in doing so, demonstrating that they aren't really dependent on climbing any mountains.
If you are still unconvinced at this point, I'm wondering if the crux of our disagreement comes down to differing views of personal identity? Perhaps it is your view that the subject of experiences is some sort of temporally homogenous, unified thing that experiences must accrue in? My position is more the opposite of that - I'd liken experiences to being more like discrete "events" rather than linked chains.
I do think that it's common for low-level negative experiences to play important constitutive roles in positive higher-level experiences, such that removing the former would make the latter less positive, yes. Although this doesn't seem to be what "no pain no gain" is usually about, which is just a contingent fact about how our muscles work. We want larger, stronger muscles for various reasons, but it doesn't seem like we really want the macroexperience of difficult lifting and sore muscles during healing. Better examples are watching a movie or reading a book in which many moment of sadness, fear or anger are crucial to making the overall experience worthwhile (and not in a straightforwardly instrumental way). Or playing sports or games where the tension and worry of possibly losing cannot be removed without greatly diminishing the experience.
I agree entirely with the factual description in your third paragraph. I disagree that sitting on a cushion taking ayahuasca and having a steady stream of positive microexperiences constitutes a better macroexperience than different sorts of macroexperience which involve more complex internal structures of positive and negative moments. It's not generally on evolutionary or neurological facts where pluralistic/eudaemonistic consequentialists disagree with hedonists, after all. :-)
As to the persistence of selves, that's a huge rabbit hole, of course. I consider the "linked chains" of experiences to be very important normatively, and specifically to have emergent properties which can have quite different strength (and sometimes even different valence) from a summation of the momentary experiences. I guess I don't see how this requires a "unitary" self. A typical Parfitian "overlapping threads of strong connectedness" seems perfectly compatible with thinking about normative consequences in long focus. Maybe a self (or at least a sense of self) might not even be necessary at all, so long as there were still some way for the low-level experiences to have the right sort of temporal and causal relationships with one another.
This is great, thanks so much for sharing. I was hoping to attend but I was dealing with health issues all of January and put off the application until the last minute. I didn't realize the application deadline was in the middle of the day, and so I missed it, thinking it was at midnight.
I was considering making a trip to the Bay Area anyway but ultimately decided not to. I hope to attend EA Global London and EA Global Boston in October.
Keep up with the criticisms of Yudkowsky. The dude has a bit of a God complex and a lot of people seem afraid to criticize him too harshly given his lofty status, which is not a healthy aspect of the community. Vigorous criticism is at the foundation of civilizational progress and helps prevent cult-like dynamics in tight-knit social groups.
On heroin rats being happy: https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2019/08/rats-prefer-social-interaction-to-heroin-or-methamphetamine
Values and morality are situated in geography, time, and society, they aren't fixed, and they are almost never shared by the whole community. 'Moral facts' is either a tautology or an oxymoron. I can't decide which, given it's such a peculiar expression.
The claim isn't that there are moral facts that everyone does agree with, just that there are true moral facts.
Why on earth would it be relevant whether something is shared by the whole community? Evolution is objectively correct, even if at not a single point throughout history everyone agreed that it is true.
Evolution is science, not a 'moral fact'.