X-Message-Number: 10173
From: 
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 12:09:21 EDT
Subject: values again

Brian Manning Delaney (#10170) wrote:

Brook Norton <> wrote:
>I'll restate that the underlying assertion is (borrowing
>some from Ettinger) ** The only rational
>approach for anyone is to try to maximize
>personal happiness over future time,
>appropriately weighted.**


Hi Brook. I think you are wrong, or saying something empty.

If you really believe that at "the most basic level, ... the
brain is hardwired to always choose to increase happiness,"
then what you mean by happiness is simply what we choose.
Thus, you're saying, at bottom: the only rational approach
for anyone is to choose what we choose. 
------------
Dr. Delaney is not to be blamed for missing some important points. As I have
said many times, the topic is very difficult, and misconceptions abound at the
highest levels of science and philosophy. Some of these misconceptions are so
ingrained in culture that even a book-length exposition (which I am preparing)
is unlikely to make more than a dent. But the importance of the issues is such
that the effort seems worth while. 

Once more, despite the probable futility of a short discussion, I am impelled
to make a response.

First, it is not exactly true that the brain is hard-wired to choose to
increase happiness. The brain, in Lorentz' metaphor, is a disorderly
parliament of instincts (and habits and preferences etc.). "Choices" can arise
in various ways, not all of them the result of balanced appraisal or cool
calculation or anything similar. (See my post yesterday.) Nevertheless, Brook
Norton is basically correct, that our most basic value is to maximize personal
happiness (satisfaction, feel-good, whatever you want to call it).

It seems superficially reasonable to object, as Dr. Delaney does, that the
statement is circular and meaningless--that saying we always choose to
increase satisfaction is the same as saying that what we choose is what we
mean by "satisfaction." One way to understand the error is simply to compare
alleged or chosen criteria of value, and ask "Why?"

For example, suppose someone says his highest value is to improve the lot of
humankind, regardless of his own fate. We simply ask, "Why?" It will develop
that this is just what he wants. That is his value because that is his value.
THIS is circular. Someone like Brook, on the other hand, will say I want to
feel good because that is the way I am made, at the most basic biological
level. Feeling good is an end, not a means. "Helping humanity" is a means, not
an end. 

Another way of helping perception is to reflect that (barring certain esoteric
possibilities such as telepathy or time travel), the only thing that can ever
be DIRECTLY important to anyone is what happens in his own head--physiological
events. The external world can only have indirect importance. And precisely
what is it that is internally important? The nature of the qualia you
experience--in other words, feel-good and feel-bad.

Dr. Delaney also appears to mistake the nature of probability calculations
about the future. In order to reach a rational decision, it is NOT necessary
to calculate every consequence of every possible choice out to infinity.
Decision theory, rather, is precisely the science of making choices in the
face of uncertainty and limited information. 

Further confusion can arise because of built-in inconsistencies in ourselves.
In the most obvious example, evolution has produced both a tendency to self-
preservation and a tendency to self-sacrifice. But from the individual's
standpoint, the latter is (usually) not valid, and should be subordinated.

Yes, there is much, much more.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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