I think that what is causing some confusion here is that “value drift” is (probably?) a loanword from AI-alignment which (I assume?) originally referred to very fundamental changes in goals that would unintentionally occur within iterative versions of self improving intelligences, which...isn’t really something that humans do. The EA community borrowed this sort of scary alien term and is using it to describe a normal human thing that most people would ordinarily just call “changing priorities”.
A common sense way to say this is that you might start out with great intentions, your priorities end up changing, and then your best intentions never come to life. It’s not that different from when you meant to go to the gym every morning...but then a phone call came, and then you had to go to work, and now you are tired and sitting on the couch watching television instead.
Logistically, it might make sense to do the phone call now and the gym later. The question is: “Will you actually go to the gym later?” If your plan involves going later, are you actually going to go? And if not, maybe you should reschedule this call and just going to the gym now. I don’t see it as a micro death that you were hoping to go to the gym but did not, it’s that over the day other priorities took precedence and then you became too tired. You’re still the same person who wanted to go… you just …didn’t go. Being the person who goes to the gym requires building a habit and reinforcing the commitment, so if you want to go then you should keep track of which behaviors cause you to actually go and which behaviors break the habit and lead to not going.
Similarly you should track “did you actually help others? And if your plan involves waiting for a decade …are you actually going to do it then? Or is life going to have other plans?” That’s why the research on this does (and ought to) focus on things like “are donations happening”, “is direct work getting done” and so on. Because that’s what is practically important if your goal is to help others. You might argue for yourself “it’s really ok, I really will help others later in life” or you might argue “what if I care about some stuff more than helping others” and so on, but I think someone who is in the position of attempting to effectively help others in part through the work of other people (whether through donations or career or otherwise) over the course of decades should to some degree consider what usually happens to people’s priorities in aggregate when modeling courses of action.
I think another term would better fit your description. Maybe “executive failure”.
It seems to me that there’s a bunch of terms/concepts which all seem like they fit/are relevant to some extent here, including (off the top of my head):
value drift
changing priorities
executive failure (I’ve never heard this, and don’t think there’s a need to introduce the term if it doesn’t exist yet, but I can see why it’d work)
failure of willpower
failure to follow through
akrasia
procrastination
hyperbolic discounting
How relevant this is depends on the specifics
Which term is most appropriate in a given case will probably depend on the specifics and on the author/speaker’s aims. And it would probably be good for people to more often think a little more carefully about which term they use, and to more often briefly explain what they mean by the term.
I think that what is causing some confusion here is that “value drift” is (probably?) a loanword from AI-alignment which (I assume?) originally referred to very fundamental changes in goals that would unintentionally occur within iterative versions of self improving intelligences, which...isn’t really something that humans do. The EA community borrowed this sort of scary alien term and is using it to describe a normal human thing that most people would ordinarily just call “changing priorities”.
A common sense way to say this is that you might start out with great intentions, your priorities end up changing, and then your best intentions never come to life. It’s not that different from when you meant to go to the gym every morning...but then a phone call came, and then you had to go to work, and now you are tired and sitting on the couch watching television instead.
Logistically, it might make sense to do the phone call now and the gym later. The question is: “Will you actually go to the gym later?” If your plan involves going later, are you actually going to go? And if not, maybe you should reschedule this call and just going to the gym now. I don’t see it as a micro death that you were hoping to go to the gym but did not, it’s that over the day other priorities took precedence and then you became too tired. You’re still the same person who wanted to go… you just …didn’t go. Being the person who goes to the gym requires building a habit and reinforcing the commitment, so if you want to go then you should keep track of which behaviors cause you to actually go and which behaviors break the habit and lead to not going.
Similarly you should track “did you actually help others? And if your plan involves waiting for a decade …are you actually going to do it then? Or is life going to have other plans?” That’s why the research on this does (and ought to) focus on things like “are donations happening”, “is direct work getting done” and so on. Because that’s what is practically important if your goal is to help others. You might argue for yourself “it’s really ok, I really will help others later in life” or you might argue “what if I care about some stuff more than helping others” and so on, but I think someone who is in the position of attempting to effectively help others in part through the work of other people (whether through donations or career or otherwise) over the course of decades should to some degree consider what usually happens to people’s priorities in aggregate when modeling courses of action.
I think another term would better fit your description. Maybe “executive failure”.
Me neither. Nor do I see it as a value drift though.
It seems to me that there’s a bunch of terms/concepts which all seem like they fit/are relevant to some extent here, including (off the top of my head):
value drift
changing priorities
executive failure (I’ve never heard this, and don’t think there’s a need to introduce the term if it doesn’t exist yet, but I can see why it’d work)
failure of willpower
failure to follow through
akrasia
procrastination
hyperbolic discounting
How relevant this is depends on the specifics
Which term is most appropriate in a given case will probably depend on the specifics and on the author/speaker’s aims. And it would probably be good for people to more often think a little more carefully about which term they use, and to more often briefly explain what they mean by the term.