Everything is a feeling?

At this point I start clubbing the definitions of feelings and intuition together.

You see that your feelings are untrustable as they are giving you circular preferences in many places, in some places they are outright wrong (sugar urge), in many places they are incapable of computing a decision. We have a sugar urge. More we eat in todays world, the more harm it does to the health. Despite knowing this, we are unable to control the craving. What we hear has not much control of our internal things. So you can assume 2 things, that somehow long and healthy life is not worth anything close to the sugar rush. or that the brain can’t compute sufficiently. Anyways, if you go by feelings, then you have issues.

We also realize that feelings is the only thing we have. Yes, feelings are untrustworthy, but then what else do we have? Everything seems to be a feeling. Apparently even Modus ponens follows from feelings/intuition. Modes Ponens is when we agree on ‘if P then q’, then if P happens, Q happens as well. It might seem obvious that it is right. But, I think it is important to realize that ‘it feels like it is right’. The very basics follows from feelings - something that makes me feel like something is right or wrong, something that tells me whether I should be doing something or not.

Often times I have thought of questioning my current thought process, but I refrained from it. I can’t start at questioning my very thought process right now. Then I am lost max! Where will I even begin if you question the very tool that I use to think now. It’s one thing that I have been avoiding all along; The only tool I would continue to use and question later. Maybe this is it. You have to use this faulty system, to know more about what the system is meant to do, to repair the faulty system or to make error corrections. You accept that you have a faulty system and that that is all you have. Every thought is processed through this system. Anything you think is through this faulty system. Everything you do is through this faulty system.

The solution inside our head

What are my other options anyway? I could probably let someone very wise to let me know what I should do. But whether I end up doing it or not would still be in consultation with my current system; based on whether I feel like doing it or not. For example, if the wise man told you to chop someones head off, you would not do it right, even if it is Peter Singer, even if he says that it is based on science or whatever! And how do you determine he is wise in the first place?

There seems to be a solution inside your head. It doesn’t matter what others say, or what anyone says on how to lead your life, unless it makes sense to the solution inside your head, it seems worthless. If someone says he has the solution to life and he gives you a box which says, “Chop the head of the nearest child”; for the sake of this argument lets assume no one will ever know and that there will be no consequences. Still, I am afraid I can never do it, irrespective of who it comes from. If someone says that you have to eat grass, then I guess I still wouldn’t do it. But if someone says that you have to help people atleast in a small way, then I find myself agreeing with them. If someone says fucking girls, having lots of friends, partying every weekend, playing a lot of sports, gaining the respect of your peers, is what we should do in life, I agree with them even more. It seems like I know what I want to do already! Huh! We call this the ‘solution in my head’. It seems that anything not in the ‘solution in my head’ is repugnant (chop someones head off, kill someone, kill a child) and anything is part of the solution in my head (have sex, hang out with friends, travel) seems like things I would wan’t to do. ‘Wanting to do’ translating to doing, and further translating to meaningful impact is a whole another story, which we shall not deal with within this essay for now.So letting others decide for you is out of the question.

The solution in your head is a list of virtues that you agree with. For example, you agree with not killing people, not eating people, saving people, reasoning to come to the right solution etc… This is different from feelings which make us do things. Just because something is part of the solution in our head, doesn’t mean that our feelings will reflect it a 100%.

A few decades ago, we thought slavery was alright, women should not have rights to vote, women belong in the kitchen, transgenders are bad and harmful and useless creatures who don’t like to work, being gay is a disease, etc… But somehow we seem to have a different take on this now. What happened to the ‘solution in our head’?

The Solution has evolved! Or, rather, our understanding of the Solution in our Head has evolved.

It is like a rough map of some terrain. Initially, it just marks out some hills and a river (“Don’t kill me, I won’t kill you. Let’s hunt together”). Nothing is to scale. There are vast parts unmarked (“how to treat women, blacks, gays, etc.”). Then, as we gain more and more knowledge, we fill in the vaguer parts of the map (“Ah! Black people are basically just like me. It is wrong to treat them like slaves”).

Make no mistake, we have just explored a tiny bit of the territory. There are still huge sections of the map still hazy and blank.
-STM

It appears that your solution in your head can change/evolve. How? for example, we can imagine a scenario where we realize that even black people are just people. Skin color seems like such a fragile concept that we cannot base so much importance on, so much so to decide that the black people are worthless. Aren’t they also just like us?

The solution can evolve, say based on reason. You can be brought up in a Christian household or any orthodox shit-ass household, and you might think being gay is a disease; being a transgender is a disease. But then, REASON: they seem to be just like us. For no fault of theirs how can we hate on someone, for something that went “wrong” with their hardwiring? It could very well be you! You were just lucky enough to not be them. How dare we look at some stupid book(having no evidence to support itself in the first place) and judge people based on that! It seems like the current solution in our head can evolve, or our understanding of the true solution in our head can evolve.

BUT

Why has it “evolved” for you in some cases and not for so many thousand people around the world? I accept the reasoning that it is not fair to discriminate against the LGBT community for no fault of theirs. It is very important to treat them like normal people, make them one with the society. But why doesn’t it make sense to other people? We do know of people who are terrorists, who are sufficiently large in number to cause so much havoc in the name of something they think is right; something that is part of their solution in their head? How is it that they can chop someones head off with ease, but not me. Why is it part of their solution in their head. Am I missing something?

The gap between knowing and doing is large. I have no clue how to bridge it. There are millions of people who agree with Eleizers reasoning, and have read all his posts, and yet, where is the contribution to MIRI? The gap between hearing a reason and accepting it is also large. Just because something sounds reasonable doesn’t mean we will change our beliefs for it. Despite the countless reasons, arguments given against theism, to theists, they still refuse to jump ship. And we know there are so many theists.

Anyways this is a million dollar question. What I mean by that is that if I know this, then I can change several people. Highly unlikely that such a question has been answered. First there is accepting the reason, admitting that there is something wrong with us and then actively seeking to change ourselves. Both are hard steps. For now, I leave this as it is.

It appears that the current solution inside your head might be different from the solution of other people. It might be different due to things like social conditioning etc… It seems to be up to ever individual to explore it further to understand and realize the true system. It is everyones own battle to fight.

Feelings as only direction pointers

Eleizer in his post on [The “Intuitions” Behind “Utilitarianism”][ele_intuition] says,

I see the project of morality as a project of re-normalizing intuition. We have intuitions about things that seem desirable or undesirable, intuitions about actions that are right or wrong, intuitions about how to resolve conflicting intuitions, intuitions about how to systematize specific intuitions into general principles.

Delete all the intuitions, and you aren’t left with an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness, you’re left with a rock.

Keep all your specific intuitions and refuse to build upon the reflective ones, and you aren’t left with an ideal philosopher of perfect spontaneity and genuineness, you’re left with a grunting caveperson running in circles, due to cyclical preferences and similar inconsistencies.

“Intuition”, as a term of art, is not a curse word when it comes to morality - there is nothing else to argue from. Even modus ponens is an “intuition” in this sense - it’s just that modus ponens still seems like a good idea after being formalized, reflected on, extrapolated out to see if it has sensible consequences, etcetera.

But what do you do anyway?

Eleizer further elaborates and I seem to agree with him on this part that, if you stick to purely intuition/feeling, your view will be fucked because of all the things we saw earlier such as, misrepresentation of wants, circular logic, heuristics not capable of handling the complexities of current society, etc. You become no different from a caveman.

But if you don’t use feelings at all, then you are just as empty and worthless as a rock. If you remove the feelings, there is no you. But then maybe there is a ~middle ground~, a third option perhaps, wherein you reflect on intuitions, extrapolate to see if it makes “sensible consequences” etc… You’ll be stuck with circular preferences.

But how do you know for sure what feelings are right? How do you know your intuition is right?

But what do you do anyway?
-Eleizer in the [same post][ele_intuition],

The obvious choice isn’t always the best choice, but sometimes, by golly, it is. I don’t stop looking as soon I find an obvious answer, but if I go on looking, and the obvious-seeming answer still seems obvious, I don’t feel guilty about keeping it. Oh, sure, everyone thinks two plus two is four, everyone says two plus two is four, and in the mere mundane drudgery of everyday life everyone behaves as if two plus two is four, but what does two plus two really, ultimately equal? As near as I can figure, four.
-Eliezer on Why truth

Paraphrasing Eleizer, As far as I can figure out 2+2 gives 4. The idea being if you have 2 un-reacting stones, side by side along with 2 more of them, in total you should have 4, and not 3 for example. That is what 2+2 means. Its a facilitator that helps us in daily life to know in advance what we will have in the end. Its a rule of the universe!

How do you know modus ponens is right?

“Intuition”, as a term of art, is not a curse word when it comes to morality - there is nothing else to argue from. Even modus ponens is an “intuition” in this sense - it’s just that modus ponens still seems like a good idea after being formalized, reflected on, extrapolated out to see if it has sensible consequences, etcetera.

The snow is white if and only if the snow is white

What I gather from all of this is that, this is it. You only have for yourself the faulty system. You use it. But you don’t just use it, you reason, you use science, you use Bayes, and come up with the best answer you possibly can.

The Truth about life?

We have seen a number of feelings earlier, which seem to have some discrepancies. For example, we saw about the sugar urge, where we saw that our brain gives us this urge to make us eat more vitamin-based foods while there was no way to overeat them, in the stone-age. But now we see that this backfires with diseases, while eating current processed foods. Another example as we discussed earlier was about the Israeli scientists who found that a single child appeared far more valuable, got much more contributions than a whole group of 8.

While trying to understand our true stance with regard to children, we start with seeing how the faulty system behaves in different scenarios.

Q:If there is a child dying next to you, right now, will you save it?
A: Yes (High emotional quotient)

Q:There are children dying everywhere, right now, why haven’t you saved any? A: I haven’t saved any because I don’t feel like it.

Why is it that a child is worthy of your support only when it dies next to you? Could it be that there is some deep moral truth behind it or could it be that your sensory experiences are limited. If there is a boy trapped in a soundproof room just next to you, would you FEEL anything? Having an idea of the brain, it’s associated heuristics and biases , it seems highly likely that we wan’t to save children irrespective of location. It seems unfair to tell the dying kids that you don’t feel it and would not help them because of that. If they died next to you they probably had a chance. It’s hard for the brain to cope with the current scenarios and output right answers as well, as it belongs to a completely different tribal setting.

There are so many millions of people waiting at the shores of their cities, with their hands extended towards the sky, in a desperate cry for help. They raise their hands and look upwards, with the hope that something will save them from their plight of starvation, malnutrition, and getting their basic needs satisfied. They don’t know they are actually asking you. We don’t know that we actually want to help them.

There seems to be no denying that we value life. I quoted an example of my friend in one of the earlier posts. All of a sudden, he donated 75 euros to a girl who was his teachers daughter back in Kenya for some emergency surgery. He said “Kanla thanni ..”, meaning ‘I was moved to tears’. i.e., heavy emotional quotient. 75 euros is quite a big amount for him here. About 7% of his salary. Yesterday I read a post, about how this woman’s kid got kidnapped by her own husband, and the tragedies she faced after that including and notwithstanding her loss of eyesight and facial disfigurement owing to an acid attack by the same husband. My heart sank and I immediately looked for a link to donate! She seemed to be from a poor family and her dad managed to take care of the expenses until now. Her fundraiser was for about 23000$ or around that, and got over in 2 hrs.

Where the person is from doesn’t seem to matter. Whether you know the person or not doesn’t seem to matter. His race, ethnicity, background, doesn’t matter. All that is important is the EQ (Emotional Quotient). It’s so sad that only if you have a really sad story along with media covering you enough that you reach a few thousand people on FB that you get attention, that you get help. It’s sad because not everyone who deserves help is featured.

But what can I do? I don’t feel it. It’s not my fault?

In this day and age, unlike that in the olden days, you can know what is happening everywhere. Previously you thought you had a small family i.e, the tribe. But now the whole world is your family.

If someone is being killed behind that wall, and you know some thing is about to happen, you would take a peek and save the person with all your might. I am confident a majority of people will do it. But a majority of people, wont gather their forces together, to take a peek into say the shit that is happening in the world and help out all those people being killed behind the metaphorical wall.

It seems that life is very important, but how important is it? How much money would you pay to save a kid?

Lets go for the take

How do you go from here to …

Let’s say there is someone dying in front of you, how much should you be willing to spend for them. Your emotional quotient is at an all time high. Go!

Whether or not you seem to have all the tools, what do you do anyway?

You could spend all your life savings on someone who needs the most expensive cancer-treatment, and add effectively 100 years of life to the child. But what if you could add more than 100 years of life with the same savings?

Ultimately I am not sure if spending your money on the kid that got you high emotional quotient, is the right thing to do, as with the same money you could probably save the lives of several others, with certain mild ailments, adding much more than 100 life years to the world. We could maximize many different things such as happiness, life years added, contribution back to the society etc., but what should we actually do?

Utility function

So it seems that we are tying to maximize something. Are we trying to maximize only happiness? No. We are ready to give up sex, food and money, sometimes, and we might also be ready to take some pain to save someone. Remember the movie Gandhi? He gave up everything and led a simple life. There was only one thing that was important to him. He was jailed, he often starved, he went through a wide amount of discomfort. People hit him, beat him, but yet he seemed to be still going in that direction. He was trying to maximize something. Perhaps the welfare of his folk? But Why? Is is more important to him than his life, health etc.? He also had many 100’s of followers atleast, who accompanied him on his way to be beaten jailed. What were they trying to maximize?

For now we call this the utility function, a function with all sorts of variables, which outputs a single number for us to know how our actions have faired. And yes you guessed it right, we have to uncover what is important to this utility function as well. Which variable is scaled high etc…

The utility function for example can be made of variables such as ‘number of happy life years added’, ‘contribution back to the society’, ‘number of lives saved now’, ‘number of lives saved in the future’ but as always we have to discover it, uncover it. How do I go about determining what is important to this system?

Further options

All the above is fine. I have a strong want to satisfy my value system. I have feelings which are part of me which attempt to satisfy the value system. But then they only attempt, and are far from satisfying the true value system.

There is this idea inside me that there are three things I can possibly do. 1) Follow the true value system, and get benefited as a by-product by the evidence shown by Martin Seligman on ‘life of flow’ and ‘life of purpose’.

It’s going to be hard. It will probably involve a lot of writing, and critical thinking and most importantly ACTION leading to impact.

2) Do what I am currently doing, like everyone else, continue to have those circular preferences, focus on the pleasurable life i.e., girls, video games, buying stuff etc. Learn an instrument and a sport and really be good at it and enjoy the life of flow. There is undeniable evidence where in Martin Seligman shows that the pleasurable life can only take you so far and that the life of flow will take you further. So have a mix of both?

This is what seems to come naturally to me. It’s much easier than option 1.

3) Don’t do anything, just die off, because this whole life doesn’t make sense. Why are you listening to some random stupid value system in the first place, especially considering that it just happened somehow that we have values?

There is just no point in life. Why are we trying to maximize the value system of some random event(evolution). Who cares? Look at this whole life system from the higher point of view. It seems to have no meaning. Just like how we look at ants. Absolutely purposeless, is their existence. Why are we any different? Just like ants, we also do so many things to fulfill our value system.