“that I am a person whose life has value outside of my potential impact.”
I’m happy to hear that this insight is worked for you, but want to flag that I don’t think it’s essential. Personally have been trying to think of my life only as a means to an end. Will my life technically might have value, I am fairly sure it is rather minuscule compared to the potential impact can make. I think it’s’ possible, though probably difficult, to intuit this and still feel fine / not guilty, about things. It makes me fear death less, for one.
I’m a bit wary on this topic that people might be a bit biased to select beliefs based on what is satisfying or which ones feel good. This is the type of phrase that I would assume would be well accepted in common views of morality, but in utilitarianism it is suspect.
To be clear, of course within utilitarianism one’s wellbeing does have “some” “intrinsic/comparative” value, I suspect it’s less than what many people would assume when reading that sentence.
My read of this article was that this could have been interpreted as meaning “for a form of consequentialism that doesn’t give extra favor to oneself, it’s often optimal to maximize a decent amount for oneself.”
I’m totally fine optimizing for oneself when under the understanding that their philosophical framework favors favoring oneself, it just wasn’t clear to me that that was what was happening in this article.
If the lesson there is, “I’m going to make myself happy because the utility function I’m optimizing for favors myself heavily”, that’s fine, it’s just a very different argument then “actually, optimizing for my own happiness heavily is the optimal way of achieving a more universally good outcome.” My original read is that the article was saying the latter, I could have been mistaken. Even if I were mistaken, I’m happy to discuss the alternative view; not the one Nicole meant, but the one I thought she meant. I’m sure other readers may have had the same impression I did.
All that said, I would note that often being personally well off is a great way to be productive. I know a lot of altruistic people who would probably get more done if they could focus more on themselves.
[Apologies for the rambly nature of this response]
Thanks Ozzie, I agree with your point here. I don’t think this is essential for everyone and I agree it can lead to or be indicative of some weird biased mental move.
A couple of clarifications/mini-rambles on what I mean (but I think what I mean is a much less interesting than a useful discussion about what is helpful to people and what the implications and pros and cons of different views are):
I agree that the value I can give to others is a lot more in expectation than the value of my life on its own.
My career and donation decisions are mostly based on utilitarian reasoning (or at least that’s what I intend). Not all of my life is though (there’s a future post on this topic brewing in my mind—something about a portfolio approach to life).
[super confused on this] I think sometimes acting as if I believe more of a virtue ethics-y/deontological thing in some day to day decisions, particularly around personal life/happiness might be better as measured/defined by utilitarianism lights? Anyways, something in the vague direction of this argument feels true for me with optimizing for my own happiness. I’m confused about this though, and depending on the day might respond very differently if asked about it.
I think the main underlying point I was trying to make is more along the lines of the latter thing Ozzie said (with one slight edit, in bold) “actually, optimizing for my own happiness more than I had been is the optimal way of achieving a more universally good outcome”.
I probably should have worded that point differently? I’m not positive though—I wrote the initial phrase in question for the Nicole of a few years ago who had literally forgotten that she, too, counts and has value. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it felt like a very important realization to me. I had actually forgotten and that forgetting had lots of subtle impacts on my emotional well-being and intellectual resiliency that were quite bad.
It’s implied in his comment that either Nicole is a utilitarian or that utilitarianism is correct regardless of if she believes it. I’m concerned the Forum has a culture of assuming everyone involved in EA is utilitarian, so I want to ask about it explicitly when I see it. I wasn’t sure if Ozzie know that Nicole is a utilitarian or if this was an assumption.
I enjoyed reading this, thank you.
One small point:
I’m happy to hear that this insight is worked for you, but want to flag that I don’t think it’s essential. Personally have been trying to think of my life only as a means to an end. Will my life technically might have value, I am fairly sure it is rather minuscule compared to the potential impact can make. I think it’s’ possible, though probably difficult, to intuit this and still feel fine / not guilty, about things. It makes me fear death less, for one.
I’m a bit wary on this topic that people might be a bit biased to select beliefs based on what is satisfying or which ones feel good. This is the type of phrase that I would assume would be well accepted in common views of morality, but in utilitarianism it is suspect.
To be clear, of course within utilitarianism one’s wellbeing does have “some” “intrinsic/comparative” value, I suspect it’s less than what many people would assume when reading that sentence.
To clarify;
My read of this article was that this could have been interpreted as meaning “for a form of consequentialism that doesn’t give extra favor to oneself, it’s often optimal to maximize a decent amount for oneself.”
I’m totally fine optimizing for oneself when under the understanding that their philosophical framework favors favoring oneself, it just wasn’t clear to me that that was what was happening in this article.
If the lesson there is, “I’m going to make myself happy because the utility function I’m optimizing for favors myself heavily”, that’s fine, it’s just a very different argument then “actually, optimizing for my own happiness heavily is the optimal way of achieving a more universally good outcome.” My original read is that the article was saying the latter, I could have been mistaken. Even if I were mistaken, I’m happy to discuss the alternative view; not the one Nicole meant, but the one I thought she meant. I’m sure other readers may have had the same impression I did.
All that said, I would note that often being personally well off is a great way to be productive. I know a lot of altruistic people who would probably get more done if they could focus more on themselves.
[Apologies for the rambly nature of this response]
Thanks Ozzie, I agree with your point here. I don’t think this is essential for everyone and I agree it can lead to or be indicative of some weird biased mental move.
A couple of clarifications/mini-rambles on what I mean (but I think what I mean is a much less interesting than a useful discussion about what is helpful to people and what the implications and pros and cons of different views are):
I agree that the value I can give to others is a lot more in expectation than the value of my life on its own.
My career and donation decisions are mostly based on utilitarian reasoning (or at least that’s what I intend). Not all of my life is though (there’s a future post on this topic brewing in my mind—something about a portfolio approach to life).
[super confused on this] I think sometimes acting as if I believe more of a virtue ethics-y/deontological thing in some day to day decisions, particularly around personal life/happiness might be better as measured/defined by utilitarianism lights? Anyways, something in the vague direction of this argument feels true for me with optimizing for my own happiness. I’m confused about this though, and depending on the day might respond very differently if asked about it.
I think the main underlying point I was trying to make is more along the lines of the latter thing Ozzie said (with one slight edit, in bold) “actually, optimizing for my own happiness more than I had been is the optimal way of achieving a more universally good outcome”.
I probably should have worded that point differently? I’m not positive though—I wrote the initial phrase in question for the Nicole of a few years ago who had literally forgotten that she, too, counts and has value. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it felt like a very important realization to me. I had actually forgotten and that forgetting had lots of subtle impacts on my emotional well-being and intellectual resiliency that were quite bad.
Did Nicole say she was a utilitarian?
Did Ozzie say she did?
It’s implied in his comment that either Nicole is a utilitarian or that utilitarianism is correct regardless of if she believes it. I’m concerned the Forum has a culture of assuming everyone involved in EA is utilitarian, so I want to ask about it explicitly when I see it. I wasn’t sure if Ozzie know that Nicole is a utilitarian or if this was an assumption.
I read Ozzie’s comment as Ozzie sharing his experiences in a post where Nicole shared hers.