Hmm, I think I ultimately rely only on my emotions. I’ve always been a proponent of “Do The Math, Then Burn The Math and Go With Your Gut”. When it comes to the question of personal cause prioritization, the question is basically “what do I want to do with my life?” No spreadsheet will tell me an answer to that, it’s all emotions. I use spreadsheets to inform my emotions because if I didn’t, a part of me would be unhappy and would nag me to do it.
This is getting very off-topic but I’m now thinking that maybe all decisions like that. Maybe my only goal in life is to be happy in the moment. I do altruistic things because when I don’t do it for a while, a part of me nags me to do it and that makes me less happy. I don’t eat candy constantly because I’d be unhappy in the moment before eating it (or buying it) since it might ruin my health. I think that 2+2=4 because it feels good and 2+2=3 feels bad. If you disagree with some of that (and there are probably good reasons to disagree, I partly just made that up), then you might disagree with what I said in the parent comment (the one starting with “Hmm”) for the same reason.[1]
[EDIT, Feb 17th: I expressed this in a confusing way. Most of what I meant is that I try to drop the “shoulds”, which is what many therapists recommend. I use spreadsheets for prioritizing causes but I do it because I want to not because I should. I felt I needed to say this probably because I misinterpreted what Denise said in a weird way because I was confused. The question of how much to trust feelings vs spreadsheets does make sense. There is something else I’m saying in this comment that I still believe but I won’t get into it because it’s off-topic.]
I wonder if you’re Goodharting yourself (as in Goodhart’s law) or oversimplifying. Your emotions reflect what you care about and serve to motivate you to act on what you care about. They’re one particular way your goals (and your impressions of how satisfied/frustrated they are or will be) are aggregated, but you shouldn’t forget that there are separately valuable goals there.
I wouldn’t say someone can’t be selfless just because they want to help others and helping others satisfies this desire or makes them happy. And I definitely wouldn’t say their only goal is to be happy in the moment. They have a goal to help others, and they feel good or bad depending on how much they think they’re helping others.
EDIT: Also, it could be that things might feel more right/less wrong without feeling emotionally/hedonically/affectively better. I’m not sure all of my judgements have an affective component, or one that lines up with how preferable something is.
Maybe part of the brain just wants to be happy, and other parts of the brain condition rewards of happiness on alignment with various other goals like helping others or using spreadsheets.
Hmm, I think I ultimately rely only on my emotions. I’ve always been a proponent of “Do The Math, Then Burn The Math and Go With Your Gut”. When it comes to the question of personal cause prioritization, the question is basically “what do I want to do with my life?” No spreadsheet will tell me an answer to that, it’s all emotions. I use spreadsheets to inform my emotions because if I didn’t, a part of me would be unhappy and would nag me to do it.
This is getting very off-topic but I’m now thinking that maybe all decisions like that. Maybe my only goal in life is to be happy in the moment. I do altruistic things because when I don’t do it for a while, a part of me nags me to do it and that makes me less happy. I don’t eat candy constantly because I’d be unhappy in the moment before eating it (or buying it) since it might ruin my health. I think that 2+2=4 because it feels good and 2+2=3 feels bad. If you disagree with some of that (and there are probably good reasons to disagree, I partly just made that up), then you might disagree with what I said in the parent comment (the one starting with “Hmm”) for the same reason.[1]
[EDIT, Feb 17th: I expressed this in a confusing way. Most of what I meant is that I try to drop the “shoulds”, which is what many therapists recommend. I use spreadsheets for prioritizing causes but I do it because I want to not because I should. I felt I needed to say this probably because I misinterpreted what Denise said in a weird way because I was confused. The question of how much to trust feelings vs spreadsheets does make sense. There is something else I’m saying in this comment that I still believe but I won’t get into it because it’s off-topic.]
I wonder if you’re Goodharting yourself (as in Goodhart’s law) or oversimplifying. Your emotions reflect what you care about and serve to motivate you to act on what you care about. They’re one particular way your goals (and your impressions of how satisfied/frustrated they are or will be) are aggregated, but you shouldn’t forget that there are separately valuable goals there.
I wouldn’t say someone can’t be selfless just because they want to help others and helping others satisfies this desire or makes them happy. And I definitely wouldn’t say their only goal is to be happy in the moment. They have a goal to help others, and they feel good or bad depending on how much they think they’re helping others.
EDIT: Also, it could be that things might feel more right/less wrong without feeling emotionally/hedonically/affectively better. I’m not sure all of my judgements have an affective component, or one that lines up with how preferable something is.
Maybe part of the brain just wants to be happy, and other parts of the brain condition rewards of happiness on alignment with various other goals like helping others or using spreadsheets.