I haven’t yet got past the 1.4. Arguments for Value of Variety section because I’m just a bit unconvinced.
You could reword the intuition pump section like this:
Imagine some truly terrible moment — say extreme torture. Suppose that this torture is far more terrible than anything that humanity has experienced to date: you or I would give up years of ordinary happy life just to avoid such a peak of despair. But now suppose that this torture is just ever so slightly less bad than some other torture approach that is the worst thing that could conceivably be produced, with the same resources. For example, a radically different device is used which leads to an experience that is ever so slightly more painful.
What is better? The worst possible torture alternating with the slightly less bad torture? Or just the slightly less bad torture for the rest of time?
I suppose I can imagine someone saying the former, but I wouldn’t. I just want less suffering! You can dismiss this rewrite by saying variety is only good if it’s variety of good things, but this would introduce an asymmetry and I’m unsure that is justified. I feel like people say they like variety because we have repeatedly experienced it to be pleasurable, and that introduces a bias that we struggle to avoid when we are asked to judge scenarios that aren’t different in terms of welfare. For the same reason I’m a little unconvinced by the intrapersonal variety argument.
On the realisation-value argument. I don’t really think there is intrinsic value of things being realized. If in the distant arctic some polar bear walks a route that no polar bear has walked before but which is the exact same in every welfare-relevant way, I just don’t really care. Which is another way of me saying, realizing new things can indeed be great, but only when we can enjoy them for being new.
On the benefits for axiology point. This doesn’t so much seem an argument for variety as it seems a direct argument for the saturation view. If the saturation view allows us to avoid lots of other unpalatable conclusions then it may be worth adopting for that alone!
Did you see there’s a section in the post about negative value? It does discuss the first point you raised, that our intuitions about variety suffering aren’t as clear-cut, and that it’s not so obvious how we’d ideally handle these cases:
I at least personally get the intuition that a variety of bads makes an outcome worse. [...] My intuition is that Diverse Hell is worse than Uniform Hell, but I accept that the intuition here is less clear than it is in the positive case.
I haven’t yet got past the 1.4. Arguments for Value of Variety section because I’m just a bit unconvinced.
You could reword the intuition pump section like this:
Imagine some truly terrible moment — say extreme torture. Suppose that this torture is far more terrible than anything that humanity has experienced to date: you or I would give up years of ordinary happy life just to avoid such a peak of despair. But now suppose that this torture is just ever so slightly less bad than some other torture approach that is the worst thing that could conceivably be produced, with the same resources. For example, a radically different device is used which leads to an experience that is ever so slightly more painful.
What is better? The worst possible torture alternating with the slightly less bad torture? Or just the slightly less bad torture for the rest of time?
I suppose I can imagine someone saying the former, but I wouldn’t. I just want less suffering! You can dismiss this rewrite by saying variety is only good if it’s variety of good things, but this would introduce an asymmetry and I’m unsure that is justified. I feel like people say they like variety because we have repeatedly experienced it to be pleasurable, and that introduces a bias that we struggle to avoid when we are asked to judge scenarios that aren’t different in terms of welfare. For the same reason I’m a little unconvinced by the intrapersonal variety argument.
On the realisation-value argument. I don’t really think there is intrinsic value of things being realized. If in the distant arctic some polar bear walks a route that no polar bear has walked before but which is the exact same in every welfare-relevant way, I just don’t really care. Which is another way of me saying, realizing new things can indeed be great, but only when we can enjoy them for being new.
On the benefits for axiology point. This doesn’t so much seem an argument for variety as it seems a direct argument for the saturation view. If the saturation view allows us to avoid lots of other unpalatable conclusions then it may be worth adopting for that alone!
Did you see there’s a section in the post about negative value? It does discuss the first point you raised, that our intuitions about variety suffering aren’t as clear-cut, and that it’s not so obvious how we’d ideally handle these cases: