Yeah we probably do have a fundamental disagreement.
I think you were essentially correct when you were in the dark night. The weight you put to your own conscious experiences should not exceed the weight you put on that of other beings throughout space and time. Thus, the wonders and joys of your own conscious experience have intrinsic value, but it is not clear that satisfaction of these joys is the most effective use of the resources you as an agent have in an obvious sense (i.e. it seems like you can enable greater net experiences by privileging other entities).
I think there is a nonobvious reason to (seemingly) privilege yourself sometimes as an Effective Altruist in that concessions to your own psychological desires can facilitate your most effective operation and minimize likelihood that you will abandon or weaken your commitment to maximize well-being. This is what I mean by feeding the beast.
Your seeming reconciliation is value pluralism, which appears to, in this case, simply mean placing the value of some of your own conscious experiences in a superpriority above those of the conscious experiences of others. I would think your framing, an elevation of your own conscious experience, makes less sense than mine. Other beings’ conscious experiences are no less important than my own. I would make concessions which seemingly prioritize me, but ultimately, if I am acting morally, this preference is only illusory.
Yeah we probably do have a fundamental disagreement.
I think you were essentially correct when you were in the dark night. The weight you put to your own conscious experiences should not exceed the weight you put on that of other beings throughout space and time. Thus, the wonders and joys of your own conscious experience have intrinsic value, but it is not clear that satisfaction of these joys is the most effective use of the resources you as an agent have in an obvious sense (i.e. it seems like you can enable greater net experiences by privileging other entities).
I think there is a nonobvious reason to (seemingly) privilege yourself sometimes as an Effective Altruist in that concessions to your own psychological desires can facilitate your most effective operation and minimize likelihood that you will abandon or weaken your commitment to maximize well-being. This is what I mean by feeding the beast.
Your seeming reconciliation is value pluralism, which appears to, in this case, simply mean placing the value of some of your own conscious experiences in a superpriority above those of the conscious experiences of others. I would think your framing, an elevation of your own conscious experience, makes less sense than mine. Other beings’ conscious experiences are no less important than my own. I would make concessions which seemingly prioritize me, but ultimately, if I am acting morally, this preference is only illusory.
Do you subscribe to moral realism? If not, I’m curious what you think of Spencer‘s post: https://​​www.spencergreenberg.com/​​2022/​​08/​​tensions-between-moral-anti-realism-and-effective-altruism/​​
I am a moral realist believing agents should act to create the greatest net well-being (utility).
Not all conscious experiences are created equal.
Pursuing those ends Tyler talks about helps cultivate higher quality conscious experiences.