While I think there are very serious concerns that advancing technologies, and AI in particular, raise (such as lack of control over these systems with could be a tremendous threat, reduction of agency, and the potential for extreme concentration of power), if we can keep these technologies well under control and pointed at the betterment of humanity (a big if) I don’t think they have to destroy meaning. Here’s why:

While some people do derive a lot of their sense of self-worth from their work (such as myself), and such people could be especially hard hit if they are replaced by technology, there are, thankfully, many things that humans intrinsically value, and therefore, lots of potential sources of meaning. By seeking and then (at least to a reasonable degree) creating what we intrinsically value, we create meaning.

So let’s have a quick look at different human intrinsic values (i.e., things people value for their own sake, not as a means to an end) and how advancing technology, such as AI, may impact each of them:

—

Spirituality and purity: there are no reasons I see that technology would have to interfere with spirituality, religion, or attempts to act purely. So these values could continue being a source of meaning.

Truth and learning: if anything, really effective technology can accelerate the search for truth and our ability to learn. At the same time, technology gone wrong could make the truth harder to discern (e.g., if technology facilitates misinformation outcompeting accurate information).

Achievement: this one could be hard hit by technology insofar as it’s related to doing things that eventually AI may do better than all of us. At the same time, humans find a lot of value in achievements regardless of non-human performance. For instance, people compete in sprints (even though cheetahs could easily outrun us) and find value in achievement in chess (despite AI being able to easily beat the best human). A lot of people also value personal achievement – merely doing the best you can, or improving to do better than your own previous results.

Freedom: while technology could impair freedom (e.g., if it concentrates power into the hands of certain actors, they might choose to limit freedom), there is also potential for technology to expand freedom a lot by allowing us to do many things that weren’t possible before, either because we didn’t know how to do them or because they were too costly before.

Pleasure, non-suffering, longevity: there is no fundamental tension between technology and these values, and technology may be able to improve these by reducing sources of suffering (such as disease), increasing lifespans, and making pleasure more easily accessible.

Happiness (as distinct from pleasure and non-suffering): This is a tricky one, because technology can cut both ways here. For instance, while it’s likely social media has increased some kinds of pleasure, it may well have reduced overall happiness for some people by making them more disconnected or impacting the way they see the world.

Caring, reputation, respect, loyalty, and virtue: these don’t have to be impacted by technology; we could continue valuing these in our relationships with others, even in a world where AI has replaced most work. The main threats I see here from technology are the ways that social media can cause people to spend less face-to-face time together, and the way that AI friends or “relationship” partners could take the place of human relationships.

Justice and fairness: this could go either way. Technology could concentrate power in a way that makes these worse or systematize bias. On the other hand, if the benefits of technology are distributed widely, they could create increased abundance. Technology also has the potential, if harnessed correctly, to reduce (currently commonplace) human bias.

Diversity: globalization tends to reduce diversity, and so technology could accelerate that trend. On the other hand, giving people more freedom through technology could end up increasing forms of diversity (such as how people choose to live their lives).

Protection: technology has the ability to make us safer, so while we may experience more protection (for ourselves and our loved ones), it also could mean that our own role of protecting others is reduced, which could reduce the meaning derived from providing protection. On the other hand, if technology is not developed thoughtfully, the world could feel increasingly chaotic and even become more unsafe, so protection could become even more important.

Nature: technology has a track record of destroying nature, so that trend may continue. However, it’s possible that with sufficiently advanced technology, that trend will go the opposite direction (e.g., cheap green energy makes it easier to protect nature). Technology often destroys nature either as a means to accelerate or as a side effect of acceleration, but sufficiently advanced technology may reduce that effect.

Beauty: technology has the possibility of increasing beauty in the world (making it easier to create and experience beauty), but also runs the risk of filling the world with generic slop.

Overall, while advancing technology may have a negative impact on some things that humans intrinsically value, as long as we don’t destroy the world with these technologies and avoid allowing extreme concentration of power from them, other intrinsic values may not be impacted or even be benefited by technology. As long as we can seek and (to a reasonable degree) create what we intrinsically value, there are sources of meaning available.

This piece was first written on November 16, 2025, and first appeared on my website on December 22, 2025.

1) “But I only care about well-being (in the sense of happiness, pleasure, or lack of suffering) – that’s my ONLY intrinsic value.”

2) “People may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being.”

Here’s my response:

First of all, I want to say that I really appreciate thoughtful criticism of my work. It helps me see the truth more clearly and improve my ideas. Thank you to those who provide it!

Before responding to these critiques, let me clarify what my actual claims are.

I claim that:

i) One thing the human brain does is assign value to states of the world (e.g., if that person loved me, it would be valuable; if they hated me, it would produce negative value).

ii) Upon careful reflection, we will see that most of these things we value we only value instrumentally – that is, we value them because they give us other things. But some of our values are “intrinsic values” – we care about them for their own sake and would value them even if they give us nothing else (see here).

iii) Intrinsic values are psychological facts about humans. No claim is being made here about what people “should” value or what is “objectively” morally valuable.

Since we’re talking about psychology (not philosophy), we can study people to discover their intrinsic values.

How can people’s intrinsic values be studied? Well, we had people go through a quiz to help make sure they understand what intrinsic values are, and then we asked them about many values and had them rate them on this scale.

What we found is that most people say they have MANY intrinsic values. Here are examples of the most common ones we found among Westerners.

Okay, so now to address the critiques, starting with the first one:

Critique 1: “But I only care about well-being (or happiness) – that’s my ONLY intrinsic value.”

Well, you may be right that you only value well-being (with no other intrinsic values). On the other hand, in our studies, it’s very rare for someone to have only one intrinsic value, so perhaps you are mistaken about your values (or using definitions in a different way than me).

Even if you do only have one intrinsic value (which you might!), that doesn’t mean that most other people only have one – in our experience, most people report having many, even when a lot of effort is made to help them understand what exactly an intrinsic value is.

Let’s take on the second critique:

Critique 2: “People may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being.”

One way to interpret this critique is as a claim about what objectively matters – e.g., “people might think other things matter, but the objective moral truth is that only well-being matters.”

This is a very controversial philosophical position that most laypeople and most philosophers disagree with. For instance, these survey results of professional academic philosophers show that most don’t accept consequentialism, let alone theories that only value well-being (see this result from the PhilPapers Survey).

But even if the objective moral truth were that only well-being matters, that still wouldn’t mean that people’s intrinsic values all bottom out in well-being.

Remember, these are psychological facts we’re referring to here, NOT facts about the universe or philosophy. People might (psychologically) intrinsically value things that are not “objectively”/”universally” valuable.

Another (quite different) way to interpret this critique (“People may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being”) is that all psychological values bottom out in well-being.

For instance, perhaps if people reflect deeply enough, they will realize that everything they think they value intrinsically (that doesn’t seem to be just about well-being), they actually ONLY value because of its impacts on well-being.

This strongly contradicts what people claim about their own intrinsic values.

I think there are actually a lot of situations where people intrinsically value something other than well-being.

Let’s consider some of these:

(1) Some people seem to value truth intrinsically – in fact, they’d rather know an unpleasant truth even if it made their well-being a bit lower than believe a lie. I’m not saying they value truth infinitely – just that they would sometimes be willing to sacrifice some amount of well-being for the truth. For instance, if a friend (who is now deceased) secretly hated them during the whole friendship, I think many people would want to know that, even if they predicted they would be less happy knowing than not knowing.

(2) As an extreme example, many people are horrified by the idea of spending the rest of their life in total bliss if the way it is achieved is via a machine that deludes them into thinking at every moment that they’ve just won a Nobel prize, or if it’s achieved by a drug with no side effects which makes them blissful but prevents them from ever doing anything else other than lying there and experiencing bliss. Many people are adamant that they wouldn’t choose such a life even if it makes them way happier than they would normally be, and even if their loved ones could get it too (so they wouldn’t be leaving loved ones miserable).

(3) Many people care about how people think of them after they are dead – after the point that their well-being can be impacted.

(4) Many people seem to intrinsically value human connection – while human connection (e.g., love) does tend to make people happy, people often are willing to do things that make themselves less happy for those they love – even when those things aren’t about improving the happiness of the loved one (e.g., making well-being sacrifices to satisfy the wishes of a loved one after that person has passed away).

(5) There are many things people profess a willingness to sacrifice some of their well-being for, and they actually back that willingness up with behavior (i.e., they say and act as though they believe the thing is more valuable than the marginal well-being it sacrifices). For instance, some people seem to value nature itself (I’m not talking about the suffering of animals in nature or the impact nature has on humans – I’m talking about the protection or preservation of nature itself – such as the protection of trees, ecosystems, or the survival of endangered species). Some people make some well-being sacrifices to have a more positive effect on nature.

(6) Another intrinsic value some people appear to have is not being too prideful or boastful. People do not usually care about this (I claim) because of considerations related to well-being. Similarly, many people care about worshipping god or being a good practitioner of their religion – for reasons unrelated to potential reward (though, of course, the religion might say there also can be a reward).

(7) Many people seem to value equality intrinsically. For instance, many people (in fact, most people, I think) would be willing to sacrifice a little total utility to spread the utility a bit more equally. They think a world where 10 people each have (in arbitrary units) 0.999 utility (leading to a sum of 9.99 utility) is better than one where one person has 10, and everyone else has 0, even though the former world has slightly less total utility than the latter. Equality may be a well-being-related value, but it is not the same as valuing well-being – many people are willing to give up some total well-being to get more equality.

All of that being said, many intrinsic values are, indeed, well-being-related.

But even if we just consider well-being-related intrinsic values, I think it’s a mistake to collapse them into a single intrinsic value of well-being (or happiness) since they can be very different from each other (despite all being well-being related) and can be valued in very different amounts by any one person.

As an example, most people value their own happiness to a different degree than the happiness of their family members, and they value their family members’ happiness to a different degree than that of strangers (or cows, or snakes, or ladybugs). So yes, these are all well-being-related values, but I think it’s more accurate to think of these as multiple intrinsic values because the amount they value each is not the same. Again, I’m not talking here about objective moral truth (is it right to value these different amounts?) – I’m talking about psychological facts.

Furthermore, some people even value positive states of well-being to different degrees than negative ones (e.g., they value reducing suffering more than increasing happiness). This suggests that well-being isn’t a single unified intrinsic value for these people.

There is one more interpretation of a critique like “people may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being,” which is that all people REALLY value is their own pleasure – when they say they value something like nature itself or equality or being remembered when they’re gone, they are just getting pleasure out of the thought of that thing, and it’s that pleasure itself that they value. I think this is a very inaccurate perspective on the way human minds work, but it’s way too much to cover in this essay. Here is a whole other essay where I address that topic if you’re curious to see it.

So, do all intrinsic values boil down just to well-being? I don’t think so – intrinsic values are psychological facts about humans, and “bottoming out in well-being” just doesn’t seem to be how most human minds work. Most humans intrinsically care about lots of different things.

This piece was first written on June 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on June 20, 2024.

This is the fifth and final part in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the first, second, third, and fourth parts.

In previous posts, I’ve described Valuism – my life philosophy. I’ve also discussed how it could serve as a life philosophy for others. In this post, I discuss how a Valuist lens can help shed light on various fields and areas of inquiry.

Valuism and Effective Altruism

Effective Altruism is a community and social movement about “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.”

Effective Altruists often operate from a hedonic utilitarian framework (trying to increase happiness and reduce suffering for all conscious beings). But Effective Altruism can alternatively be approached from a Valuist framework.

You can think of Valuist Effective Altruism as addressing the question of how to effectively increase the production of one’s altruistic intrinsic values within the time, effort, and focus you give to those values (as opposed to your other intrinsic values). If you’re an Effective Altruist, chances are two of your strongest intrinsic values are related to reducing suffering (or increasing happiness) and seeking truth.

For people with certain intrinsic values, Effective Altruism is a natural consequence of Valuism. To see this, consider a Valuist whose two strongest values are the happiness (and/or lack of suffering) of conscious beings and truth-seeking. Such a Valuist would naturally want to increase global happiness (and/or reduce global suffering) in highly effective ways while seeing the world impartially (e.g., by using reason and evidence to guide their understanding). This is extremely aligned with (and similar to) the mission of Effective Altruism.

For more on the relationship between Effective Altruism and Valuism, see this post.

Valuism and existential risk

Potential existential risks (such as threats from nuclear war, bioterrorism, and advanced A.I.) are a major area of focus for many Effective Altruists. According to most people’s intrinsic values, existential risk is also incredibly bad. Existential risks threaten many of the things that humans value (happiness, pleasure, learning, achievement, freedom, longevity, legacy, virtue, and so on). So for most people’s intrinsic values, Valuism is compatible with caring about existential risk reduction (depending on one’s estimates of the relevant probabilities).

Valuism and utopias

Utopias are hard to construct. Sure, we pretty much all want a world without poverty and disease, but it’s hard to agree on the specific details beyond avoiding bad things. If we go all-in on one intrinsic value, we end up with a world that seems like a dystopia to many. For instance, a utopia, according to hedonic utilitarianism, might look like attaching each of our brains to a bliss-generating machine while we do nothing for the rest of our lives, or it might look like or filling the universe with tiny algorithms that experience maximal bliss per unit of energy. Of course, these are horrifying outcomes for many people.

If we maximize utopia according to one or a small set of intrinsic values, it will very likely seem like a dystopia according to someone with other intrinsic values. To construct a utopia that is not a dystopia to many, we should make sure that it includes high levels of a wide range of intrinsic values, keeping these in balance rather than going all-in on a small set of values.

Put another way, if we preserve a wide range of different intrinsic values in our construction of potential utopias, we protect ourselves against various failure modes. For instance:

• The intrinsic value of avoidance of suffering protects us from a world where there is a lot of pain and suffering.
• The intrinsic value of freedom helps protect us from a failure mode of a world of forced wireheading. 
• An intrinsic value of truth helps protect us from a failure mode where we’re all unknowingly in the matrix (e.g., being used for a purpose unknown to us) or living under an authoritarian world government that tries to keep the populace happy through delusion.

Valuism and worldviews

Worldviews usually come with a set of shared intrinsic values. These are the strong intrinsic values that most (though not all) people with that worldview have in common. Of course, in most cases, in addition to these shared intrinsic values, each individual will also have other intrinsic values that are not shared by most people with their worldview. You can learn more about the interface between worldviews and intrinsic values in our essay on worldviews here.

Valuism and mental health 

Mental health may have interesting connections to intrinsic values. For instance, here’s an oversimplified model of anxiety and depression that I find usefully predictive (I developed this in collaboration with my colleague Amanda Metskas):

Anxiety occurs when you think there is a chance that something you intrinsically value may be lost. Anxiety tends to be worse when you perceive the chance of this happening as higher, when you perceive the intrinsic values as more important, or when the potential loss is nearer in time.

Depression occurs when you’re convinced you can’t create sufficient intrinsic value in your future. This could be because you think the things you value most are lost forever, because you see yourself as useless at achieving what you value, or for other reasons.

Valuism and animals

What do animals care about? While some animals (e.g., some insects) may not be conscious (i.e., they may lack something that it’s like to be them), and therefore it may not matter what they care about, for conscious animals, it may be important to understand what they intrinsically value so we know how to treat them ethically.

An intrinsic value perspective on animal ethics is that we should not deprive animals of the things they intrinsically value (and we should help them get the things they intrinsically value, at least when they are easy to provide). So, for instance, we can ask how much a chicken that lives almost its whole life in a small cage (as many chickens raised for food in the U.S. do) is able to have its intrinsic values met. The answer is probably very little.

But what are the sorts of things that animals may intrinsically value? I suspect there are a wide variety of animal intrinsic values and that they depend on species, but here are a few that may be especially common in mammals:

• Pleasure
• Not suffering
• Not experiencing large amounts of fear, stress, and anxiety
• Surviving
• Agency (e.g., the ability to choose)
• Bonding with other animals
• Protection of their offspring

Valuism and economics

Economics often operates under the assumption that each person has a “utility function”: i.e., a function that maps states of the world into how good or bad the person thinks those states are and that describes the choices people make. According to this frame, if a person chooses A over B, that means that their utility function assigns a higher value to A than B. For example, if I buy a Mac rather than a PC, and they are the same price, this must mean that I predict the Mac gives me more utility (according to my utility function). 

Valuism, on the other hand, says that when A is more intrinsically valuable to us than B (and equivalent along other dimensions such as price), we often will choose A over B because A produces more of what we intrinsically value; however, sometimes we choose B over A instead because we confuse instrumental value with intrinsic value, or we have a habit of doing B, we feel social pressure to do B, etc.

In other words, choosing something is not the same as intrinsically valuing something, and ideally, we want to construct a society where people get more of what they intrinsically value, not merely giving people more of what they would choose. 

A classic example where intrinsic value and choice come apart is addictive products like cigarettes or video games with upsells: people sometimes choose to pay for them and use them way past the point of benefit, according to their own intrinsic values.

A similar issue comes up when people slip into treating every dollar of GDP or each unit reduction of “deadweight loss” as though they are equally valuable. Imagine that an influencer gets all the hottest celebrities to start wearing the hair of a rare species of sloth and that buzz convinces millions of people that it’s really cool, so consumers spend billions of dollars buying these sloth hair pieces. Unfortunately, the sloth hair is really aesthetically ugly, uncomfortable, and expensive, and making clothes out of it requires torturing the sloths. This will probably increase GDP, yet (on net) intrinsic value will almost certainly have been destroyed. There is no good reason to care about GDP for its own sake, but intrinsic values are precisely the things we care about for their own sake. While increasing GDP may often be aligned with producing more of what people intrinsically value (both now and potentially in the future), in cases when GDP and the long-term production of intrinsic values are out of alignment, I would argue that GDP is no longer a good measure of societal benefit.

Going back to the sloth hair example, having a free market for this sloth hair would, according to simple economic theory, reduce “deadweight loss” (relative to having restrictions on their sale). And yet, the production of this sloth hair will likely be net destructive to what people intrinsically value. We can imagine a multi-faceted accounting of how society is doing that takes into account productivity and wealth but goes beyond it to consider the extent to which people are creating their intrinsic values; productivity and wealth would be viewed as being in the service of intrinsic value production.

As a complement to GDP, we can think about measuring how well the people of a society get the things that they intrinsic value. For instance, attempting to measure:

• How happy are they? 
• To what extent are they accomplishing their goals? 
• How free are they?
• How meaningful are their relationships? 
• How much are they suffering?

This is related to the Human Development Index, though that index includes items that are not intrinsic values, and it doesn’t cover all intrinsic values.

If we had such an accounting, different people would naturally rank societies differently (in terms of how good they are overall) because they value these intrinsic values to different extents.

As you can see in this post, a Valuist perspective may have something to say about many other topic areas, giving us a different way to look at topics like Effective Altruism, utopia, animal ethics, worldviews, mental health, and economics.

You’ve just finished the fifth and final part in my sequence of essays on my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the first, second, third, and fourth parts.

This post is part of a sequence about Valuism – my life philosophy. This post is the most technical of the sequence. Here are the first, second, third, and fifth parts of the sequence.

This is the fourth of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the first, second, third, and fifth parts (though the last link won’t work until that essay is released).

I find robots to be a useful metaphor for thinking about human intrinsic values (i.e., things we value for their own sake, not merely as a means to other ends).

Imagine that you’re programming a very smart robot. One way to do this is to give the robot an “objective function” (or “utility function”). This is a mathematical function that takes as input any state of the world and outputs how “good” that state of the world is. Suppose that the robot is programmed so that its goal is to get the world into a state that is as good as possible according to this objective function.

Imagine that, in this particular case, the robot’s objective function is separable into different distinct parts: i.e., the robot cares about multiple sorts of things. We can think of these as the robot’s intrinsic values. For instance, maybe part of its objective function says that it is good to help others, another part of its objective function says it is bad to cause pain to others, and a third part says that it is bad to deceive others. Now we can describe the robot’s intrinsic values as being “help others,” “don’t cause pain,” “don’t deceive,” and so on.

It may be the case that the robot would form intermediate goals (such as “open that door”), but the goals would ultimately be oriented toward its intrinsic values (e.g., the goal of helping others).

A neural net could be used to control the robot’s behavior, learning (based on the consequences of each action it takes) to predict which actions will lead to a good world rather than a bad one (according to its objective function).

Unlike this robot, we as humans don’t have a utility function that describes what we care about. That means that with humans, things are way more complex. But if we consider the simpler case of a robot, it can help us observe a few interesting and important things about how our own (human) values work.

1. Knowing the origin of our intrinsic values doesn’t change them 

If this robot were smart enough to one day figure out that it has an objective function, even if it figured out part or all of what that objective function is, that doesn’t mean it would stop caring about what its objective function says is valuable. Even if it knew that a human programmed it to have that objective function, its values would stay the same: after all, the objective function describes (precisely and completely) what the robot cares about.

Similarly, if the robot discovered one day that its creator’s motives did not resemble the objective function the robot was programmed with, that doesn’t make the robot suddenly have the same objective function as its creator; it merely knows more about why it has the objective function that it does.

We humans are, to a shocking degree, in the same situation as this robot. Our intrinsic values are determined through some combination of genetics (honed by evolution), our upbringing, adult life experiences, culture, and our reflection. If we figure out what caused our intrinsic values to be what they are, that doesn’t stop us from valuing those things! We are, in a sense, a kind of mesa-optimizer. Evolution, which is itself an optimization process, created us. We ourselves are, to an extent, trying to optimize. What we were optimizing for is not totally unrelated to the optimization process of evolution (which selects for whatever helps genes propagate), but it is also not the same as that optimization process (otherwise, everyone would want to be constantly donating their sperm or eggs to sperm/egg banks).

Occasionally I encounter someone who thinks that because we were created via evolution, and evolution is a process that optimizes the number of descendants that a reproductively-successful species has, we as individuals should care about having lots of descendants. But this is a logical mistake: just because the process that created you was optimized to create X, that doesn’t mean that you yourself must value creating X. Just because evolution was optimized for spreading your genes doesn’t mean you should have that as your goal.

2. We can develop non-intrinsic values out of our intrinsic values

A robot can develop values that are not intrinsic values. For instance, maybe the robot learns a rule that it should avoid taking certain types of actions (because they, on average, lead to negative value according to its objective function). This rule works well, which is why it learns it. Making an analogy to the way humans work, we can now say that the robot “values” avoiding these behaviors, but avoiding them is not an “intrinsic” value – they are just a means to an end to attain its deeper values. Like humans, the robot could end up in a situation where its instrumental values and intrinsic values diverge.

The environment could abruptly change such that, in the long term, the robot would produce a higher value of its objective function if it no longer avoided those (previously punished) behaviors – but because it follows the rule of avoiding them, it never learns that. We see this sort of behavior in people in many ways. One example is that victims of abuse sometimes adopt self-protective behavior that helped them survive in those abusive relationships, but that cause problems in future relationships, making it harder to become close to the new (much kinder) people in their life.

3. Robots might maximize expected value, but humans don’t

When designing such a robot, a natural choice for its decision rule would be to have it try to maximize the expected value of its objective function. That is, for each action, it would effectively be evaluating, “On average, how good will the world be according to my objective function if I take this action compared to if I take the other actions available?”

Humans don’t do this; we deviate from what an expected-value-maximizing agent would do (as has been well documented in the behavioral economics literature and cognitive biases literature). Interestingly, the Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem shows that any agent that makes choices so as to maximize the expected value of ANY utility function will satisfy four basic axioms in its behavior. Since real human behavior doesn’t satisfy these axioms, this provides evidence that our behavior is not well modeled by trying to maximize the expected value of some utility function.

So what do humans actually do, instead? It seems we have a variety of forces that influence our behavior, including:

• Basic urges (such as the urge to go to the bathroom)
• Built-in heuristics (such as conserving energy unless there is a reason not to)
• Habits (if every time recently when we’ve been in situation X we’ve done Y, we’ll likely do Y the next time we’re in situation X)
• Mimicry (if everyone else is doing something or expects us to do it, we’ll probably do it too)
• Intrinsic values (the things we fundamentally care about as ends in and of themselves)
• Plus others as well.

Our behavior arises from a variety of interlocking algorithms (running in our brains and bodies), and these algorithms aim at different things (conserving energy, gathering energy, and so on). A human is not a system with a unified objective.

This piece was drafted on February 5, 2023, and first appeared on this site on May 7, 2023.

You’ve just finished the fourth post in my sequence of essays on my life philosophy, Valuism. Here are the first, second, third, and fifth parts in the sequence.

This is the third of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the first, second, fourth, and fifth parts (though the links won’t work until those other essays are released).

Sometimes, people take an important value – maybe their most important value – and decide to prioritize it above all other things. They neglect or ignore their other values in the process. In my experience, this often leaves people feeling unhappy. It also leads them to produce less total value (according to their own intrinsic values). I think people in the effective altruist community (i.e., EAs) are particularly prone to this mistake.

In the first post in this sequence, I introduce Valuism – my life philosophy – and offer some general arguments for its advantages. In this post, I talk about the interaction between Valuism and effective altruism. I argue that the way some EAs think about morality and value is (in my view) empirically false, potentially psychologically harmful, and (in some cases) incoherent. 

EAs want to improve others’ lives in the most effective way possible. Many EAs identify as hedonic utilitarians (even the ones who reject objective moral truth). They say that impartially maximizing utility among all conscious beings – by which they usually mean the sum of all happiness minus the sum of all suffering – is the only thing of value, or the only thing that they feel they should value. I think this is not ideal for a few reasons.

1. I think (in one sense) it’s empirically false

Consider a person who claims that “only utility is valuable.”

If we interpret this as an empirical claim about the person’s own values – i.e., that the sum of happiness minus suffering for all conscious beings is the only thing that their brain assigns value to – I think that it’s very likely empirically false. 

That is, I don’t think anyone only values (in the sense of what their brain assigns value to) maximizing utility, even if it’s a very important value of theirs. I can’t prove that literally nobody only values maximizing utility, but I argue that human brains aren’t built to only value one thing, nor would we expect evolution to converge on pure utilitarian psychology since evolution optimizes for survival (a purely utilitarian brain would get rapidly outcompeted by other brain types if they existed 50,000 years ago). 

I think that even the most hard-core hedonic utilitarians do psychologically value some non-altruistic things deep down – for example, their own pleasure (more than the pleasure of everyone else), their family and friends, and truth. However, in my opinion, they sometimes deny this to themselves or feel guilty about it. If you are convinced that your only intrinsic value is utility (in a hedonistic, non-negative-leaning utilitarian sense), you may find it instructive to take a look at these philosophical scenarios I assembled or check out the scenarios I give in this talk about values.

For instance, does your brain actually tell you it’s a good trade (in terms of your intrinsic values) to let a loved one of yours suffer terribly in order to create a mere 1% chance of preventing 101 strangers from the same suffering? Does your brain actually tell you that equality doesn’t matter one iota (i.e., it’s equally good for one person to have all the utility compared to spreading it more equally)? Does your brain actually value a world of microscopic, dumb orgasming micro-robots more than a world (of slightly less total happiness) where complex, intelligent, happy beings pursue their goals? Because taken at face value, hedonic utilitarianism doesn’t care about whether a person is your loved one or a stranger, doesn’t care about equality at all, and prefers microscopic orgasming robots to complex beings as long as the former are slightly happier. But, if you consider yourself a hedonic utilitarian, is that actually what your brain values?

2. It can be psychologically harmful

Additionally, I think the attitude that there is only one thing of value can lead to severe psychological burnout as people try to push away, minimize or deny their other intrinsic values and “selfish,” non-altruistic desires. I’ve seen this happen quite a few times. Here’s Tyler Alterman’s personal account of this if you’d like to see an example. And here’s a theory of how this burnout happens.

3. I think (in one sense) it’s incoherent

When coupled with a view that there is no objective moral truth, I think it is, in most cases, philosophically incoherent to claim that total hedonic utility is all that matters.

If you believe in objective moral truth, it may make sense to say, “I value many things, but I have a moral obligation to prioritize only some of them” (for example, you might be convinced by arguments that you are objectively morally obliged to promote utility impartially even though that’s not the only value you have).

However, many EAs, like me, don’t believe in objective moral truth. If you don’t think that things can be objectively right or wrong, it doesn’t make sense (I claim) to say that you “should” prioritize maximizing utility for all of humanity over other values – what does this “should” even mean? Well, there are some answers for what this “should” could mean that philosophers and lay people have proposed, but I find them pretty weak.

For a much more in-depth discussion of this point (including an analysis of different ways that EAs have responded to my critique of pairing utilitarianism with denial of objective moral truth), see this essay. It collects may different objections (from EAs and from some philosophers) and discusses them. So if you are interested in whether it is or isn’t coherent to only value utility when you deny objective moral truth, and moreover, whether EAs and philosophers have good arguments for doing so, please see that essay.

I find that while many (perhaps the majority of) EAs deny objective moral truth, many still talk and think as though there is objective moral truth.

I found it striking that, in my conversations with EAs about their moral beliefs, few had a clear explanation for how to combine a belief in utilitarianism with a lack of a belief in objective moral truth, and the approaches to that that they did put forward were usually quite different from each other (suggesting, at the very least, a lack of consensus in how to support such a perspective). Some philosophers I spoke to pointed to other ways one might defend such a position (mainly drawn from the philosophical literature), but I don’t recall ever seeing these approaches being used or referenced by non-philosopher EAs (so they don’t seem to be doing much work in the beliefs of EAs who hold this view). 

I suspect it would help many EAs if they took a more Valuist approach: rather than claiming to or aspiring to only value hedonic utility, they could accept that while they do intrinsically value this – very likely far more than the average person – they also have other intrinsic values, for example, truth (which I think is another very important psychological value for many EAs), their own happiness, and the happiness of their loved ones.

Valuism also avoids some of the most awkward bullets that EAs sometimes are tempted to bite. For instance, hedonic utilitarianism seems to imply that your own happiness and the happiness of your loved ones “shouldn’t” matter to you even a tiny bit more than the happiness of a stranger who is certain to be born 1,000,000 years from now. Valuism may explain why people who identify as hedonic utilitarians may feel a great deal of internal conflict about this – even if you value the happiness of all sentient beings a tremendous amount, you almost certainly have other intrinsic values too. That means that Valuism may help you avoid some of the awkward conundrums that arise from ethical monism (where you assume that there is only one thing of value).

Valuism and the EA Community

From a Valuist perspective, I see the EA community as a group of people who share a primary intrinsic value of hedonic utility (i.e., reducing suffering and increasing happiness impartially) with a secondary strong intrinsic value of truth-seeking. Oddly (from my point of view) EAs are very aware of their intrinsic value of impartial hedonic utility, but seem much less aware of their truth-seeking intrinsic value. On a number of occasions, I’ve seen mental gymnastics used to justify truth-seeking in terms of increasing hedonic utility when (I claim) a much more natural explanation is that truth-seeking is an intrinsic value (not just an instrumental value that leads to greater hedonic utility). This helps explain why many EAs are so averse to ever lying and so averse even to persuasive marketing.

Each individual EA has other intrinsic values beyond impartial utility and truth-seeking, but in my view, those two values help define EA and make it unique. This is also a big part of why this community resonates with me: those are my top two universal intrinsic values as well.

If more EAs adopted Valuism, I think that they would almost all continue to devote a large fraction of their time and energy toward improving the world effectively. Maximizing global hedonic utility (i.e., the sum of happiness minus suffering for conscious beings) is the strongest universal intrinsic value of most community members, so it would still play the largest role in determining their goals and actions, even after much reflection. 

However, they would also feel more comfortable investing in their own happiness and the happiness of their loved ones at the same time, which I predict would make them happier and reduce burnout. Additionally (I claim), they’d accept that, like many effective altruists, they also have a strong intrinsic value of truth. They’d strike a balance between their various intrinsic values, and not endorse annihilating all their intrinsic values except for one.

I published this piece on this site on March 10, 2023.

If you read this line, please do us a favor and click here to answer one quick question.

You’ve just finished the second post in my sequence of essays on my life philosophy, Valuism – click here to go to the fourth post.

This is the first of five posts in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the second, third, fourth, and fifth parts.

Many of us struggle at times to know what to do. We are surrounded by conflicting advice about how to live our lives – from our parents, peers, and communities, from ancient philosophers, and from modern gurus and intellectuals. Faced with these conflicting opinions and a limited amount of time until we die, what should we focus our lives on?

In this post, I offer one answer to this question: my life philosophy, which I call Valuism. Simply put, if you’re a Valuist, you first work to figure out what you intrinsically value¹, and then you try to use effective methods to create more of what you intrinsically value.

Note that the phrase “intrinsic value” refers here to something you value for its own sake rather than something you value merely as a means to other ends. In other words, intrinsic values are things you would value having there be more of even if nothing else occurs as a consequence. Some intrinsic values we are born with, and others we develop through our experiences.

Your own happiness is probably one of your intrinsic values; subsequently, if you’re a Valuist, one of your aims is to become happy using effective approaches (e.g., by building healthy relationships with good people whom you are compatible with). Similarly, if you value justice, you work to create justice via effective means. If your intrinsic values include the well-being of others – as almost everyone’s do – you aim to improve the well-being of those others using effective approaches.

Like most people, you likely have more than one intrinsic value.

If you’re a Valuist, you recognize that you have multiple intrinsic values and strive to find the right balance between them; you may invest more time in some intrinsic values because they are more important to you or easier to create, but you don’t treat any of them as being worthless.

(Note: If you happen to identify as a utilitarian and believe that you only have one intrinsic value – the happiness of all conscious beings considered equally – you may want to check your reactions on these thought experiments to put that theory to the test.)

Here are some intrinsic values examples (of common intrinsic values that westerners have):

Let’s explore why one might adopt a Valuist approach.

Why be a Valuist?  

There is no moral imperative to be a Valuist. But here’s a simple argument for Valuism that some people find compelling:

There are some things that you value. But for most of these things, you value them only because they get you other things that you care about; that is, most of our values are instrumental, not intrinsic. For example, you very likely value having cash, but you value it only because it enables you to get other things you want (food, shelter, peace of mind, travel, convenience, status, pleasure, etc.), so cash is not something you intrinsically value.

Intrinsic values are the things that you value for their own sake, upon reflection; you value them not as means to other ends. In other words, you would want to create more of them even if doing so caused no other good thing to occur. You wouldn’t value cash if you couldn’t use it for anything. On the other hand, you very likely value your happiness even if it causes no additional positive consequences: your happiness is almost certainly one of your intrinsic values. In a sense, intrinsic values are the only things that you fundamentally value.

As mentioned, Valuism proposes that you carefully figure out what you intrinsically value and then aim to effectively produce those things. By “effectively,” I mean using strategies that really work well.

But why should you bother trying to produce more of what you intrinsically value? Well, simply because you fundamentally value those things. You are not necessarily “wrong,” “immoral,” or “irrational” if you don’t create more of what you intrinsically value – but you are, in that case, producing less of what you consider fundamentally valuable. Valuism is not telling you to give in to momentary urges – rather, it’s saying to use effective methods to produce what you value (upon careful reflection and introspection).

Why does Valuism have an emphasis on effective methods? Because if you value there being more of something, you implicitly prefer methods that produce more of that thing, rather than less. In other words, preferring effective methods for creating a value (over ineffective ones) is a logical consequence of having that value in the first place.

As we’ll discuss later in the essay, the Valuist approach to life ends up being quite different from how most people live. It also comes with a number of side benefits.

“The single most important moment of my life was when I sat and decided what I valued. I ended up writing what I value as soon as I wake up every morning. The year I started doing that was the happiest of my life. You might be onto something!” -John Salter

Advantages of Valuism  

I believe that Valuism offers many advantages compared to the way that many people live. For example, as a Valuist:

You’ll be less likely to confuse your instrumental and intrinsic values 

Valuists work to clearly distinguish their instrumental values from their intrinsic ones, which helps them avoid the “value traps” of mistakenly pursuing instrumental values. 

You’ll be more likely to strategically pursue what you fundamentally value

Therefore, you’ll probably create more of what you value. You might try to make your habits work in favor of your intrinsic values rather than against them: for example, if you value health, you might make a habit of walking part of the way to work. You’ll also aim to prevent urges, mimicry, trauma, or default paths from derailing your plans to produce what you value.

You’ll prioritize your values in a balanced way

You’ll take into account how much you care about each of them and how easy each is to create – rather than neglecting any of them or letting one take over your whole value system. Valuists carefully reflect on the tradeoffs between intrinsic values and pursue them in accordance with how much they are valued and how easy they are to create in a given scenario.

An additional advantage of Valuism over some other life philosophies (such as most flavors of utilitarianism) is that it doesn’t rely on you believing in objective moral truth. Back in my early 20s, I considered myself something like a classical utilitarian; at the time, I thought that the only thing that matters is maximizing utility for conscious beings across the universe. 

But on further reflection, I came to realize that I don’t believe in objective moral truth: I don’t think moral propositions such as “it’s right to maximize the flourishing of all conscious beings” can be true or false³.

This got me to wonder: what does it mean to say that I “should” maximize utility if there is no such thing as objective morality? I don’t think statements like “You should do X” are coherent unless they have an (explicit or implicit) objective, such as “You should do X if you want to achieve Y.”

(If you’d like to explore this tension between moral anti-realism and some flavors of effective altruism in more detail, see this essay I wrote about it). 

After many years of reflecting on this topic, I developed the idea of Valuism because I wanted to answer this question: “How do I decide what to do, given that I don’t think there is any objective moral truth?” If there’s not an objective answer to this question, at least there is an answer implied by what I fundamentally value. Valuism can be a source of meaning without requiring belief in objective moral truth – whether or not your values are “objectively valuable,” they are valuable to you! If you think “objective moral truth” is non-existent (or is an incoherent concept or human construction) then Valuism gives you a path towards meaning without requiring objectivity.

There’s no metaphysical obligation on you to be a Valuist, but if you are, it will likely cause you to produce more of what you actually value (i.e., precisely what fundamentally matters to you).

Can a Valuist also be an X?

Valuism is compatible with a wide variety of other philosophical beliefs. For instance, it’s compatible with a variety of meta-ethical views, including error theory, non-cognitivism, relativism, and subjectivism – see the diagram below – as well as intuitive and evolutionary-biology-based approaches to ethics. If you happen to be religious, it can also fit in with a religious worldview.

Even if you’re not sure whether or not there is such a thing as objective moral truth, Valuism could still be helpful for you. For example, if you think that there is a 20% probability of objective moral truth, then you may want to act in such a way as to combine what you think objective moral truth would dictate with what your values would dictate. Valuism may also give you a way to decide what to do in domains that are not governed by your morality. Even if you are really confident in the existence of objective moral truth, you could still incorporate Valuism into your worldview if you believe that objective moral truth is not maximally demanding and hence shouldn’t guide all your actions (i.e., Valuism can help you figure out what to do with regard to those other actions)².

Is Valuism selfish?

At first glance, this might seem like a selfish philosophy: does Valuism just mean looking after your own interests? No, not even close. Almost everyone (as we found in our research) has at least some intrinsic values that are not just about the self. In addition to values related to the self (e.g., “I value my own happiness”), people usually have values about their communities ( e.g., “I value that my friends and loved ones get the things that they want”) and “universal” intrinsic values that involve wanting good things for people beyond the people they personally know as well as abstract values that don’t pertain to people at all (e.g., “I value that people and animals all around the world don’t suffer” or “I value that all humans are treated fairly” or “I value fairness”).

Some of my own most important intrinsic values are:

• Universal
  • reducing suffering and increasing happiness for conscious beings
  • promoting truth and reducing falsehood
• Community
  • the happiness (and lack of suffering) of my loved ones
• Self
  • my own happiness (and lack of suffering)
  • not harming others with my behavior
  • believing true things and not false things
  • being honest
  • sticking to my commitments
  • being kind and having positive intent towards others

My aim in life is to increase these (and the other things that I intrinsically value).

Is Valuism just what most people already do?

Another common reaction to Valuism is: “Isn’t Valuism just telling you to do what you’re already doing? Aren’t most people already just figuring out what they value and then pursuing those values?” No! That’s not nearly as common as you might think.

The Valuist life philosophy differs from how most people live in many ways. In particular:

Most people haven’t spent much time thinking about what their intrinsic values are.

This means that they sometimes do things like accidentally pursue the intrinsic values of the people around them rather than their own intrinsic values. For instance, your parents might care a lot about you having a job that garners “respect,” whereas you may not value this at all – but you might end up becoming a doctor anyway, thanks to their influence.

People often don’t cleanly distinguish between intrinsic values and instrumental values. 

They often pursue instrumental values way past the point that makes sense for non-intrinsic values. For example, many people end up mindlessly trying to earn more money even when they can afford everything they possibly want, and more money wouldn’t help them achieve any more of their intrinsic values.

People often underinvest in plans around their intrinsic values. 

They usually don’t spend lots of time thinking about, making strategies around, and taking action in order to effectively create more of what they intrinsically value. For instance, people who strongly intrinsically value love may not be thoughtful enough about who they decide to become friends with – and end up surrounding themselves with people who aren’t very loving. And people who intrinsically value the happiness of people all around the world often donate to charities that are not very cost-effective. 

People often do not think carefully about the tradeoffs between their intrinsic values.

People may over-prioritize some values relative to how much they value them and how easy they are to create. Some are overly influenced by their family – think of people who go into a career they hate because their family expects it of them. Others over-prioritize values due to routine or a lack of reflection – think of people who always see the same friends because it’s who they’re used to making plans with, even though they haven’t meshed for years. 

And some people let a specific philosophical value take over their whole value system. This can arise when people bite a philosophical bullet. For example, when they’re in a debate with someone more well-versed in the philosophy literature, they may fail to come up with a reason to value anything other than the happiness of all conscious beings equally, so they conclude they must only care about other things (like justice, equality, or the satisfaction of their own preferences) as a means to this other end.

In fact, people are mostly guided by forces other than their intrinsic values. For instance, our behavior is heavily influenced by: 

• Habits – we do things because we’ve done them that way many times before, automatically and without thinking about it.
• Urges, appetites, and addictions – we have primal urges to do things, such as to eat ten cookies (long past the point where we are really enjoying the cookies anymore). We can get addicted to things that we don’t value.
• Pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain in the present – of course, most of us have our own present pleasure (and lack of pain) as intrinsic values, but it’s easy to pursue these past the point where we intrinsically value them (at the expense of our other intrinsic values). For example, we might spend excessive time playing video games or avoid going to the dentist.
• Mimicry – we have a drive to do what others are doing.
• Trauma triggers – we sometimes act out of distress because something has reminded us of past trauma, even when the present environment is completely safe. 
• Conventional paths and defaults – we often follow standard paths instead of thinking about what would create the most of what we intrinsically value.

The upshot here is that people very often make choices that are not aligned with their intrinsic values.

What does it mean to “value” something, and what are intrinsic values?

You might think, “Ok, I’m convinced that I should try to create more of what I intrinsically value – but what do I intrinsically value?” We actually developed a test that will help you work out your intrinsic values! 

An intrinsic value is something that you value in itself (i.e., for its own sake) and not merely because of its consequences. We can distinguish these from things we value instrumentally – that is, things we value only because they help us get (or create) more of other things.

Here is the values wheel that we created to illustrate the different categories of intrinsic values we found in our research:

Most people value money, but probably no one values money intrinsically; people only value money because they can use it to buy other things that they value. Imagine if money didn’t let you buy anything, didn’t give you any power, prestige, or positive feelings, and it couldn’t even be burned for warmth. Clearly, in that case, it would be worthless – so it lacks intrinsic value. The experience of happiness isn’t like this (for almost everyone). You value feeling happy even if nothing else comes about as a result of that happiness.

What does it mean to “value” something? I use the term “value” in a purely psychological, empirical sense. That is, I’m referring to facts about your brain. Your brain can perform various operations (such as making predictions about what’s about to happen, or imagining a hypothetical scenario, or evaluating how “true” something you just said feels to you). One such operation is considering a state of the world and judging how valuable it is (to you) – our brains seem to have a basic operation related to assigning value to states of the world.  Value comes in degrees and can be positive, neutral (i.e., zero value), or negative. These degrees of valuing can be very fine-grained. We can feel that one thing is just slightly better than another –  e.g., we might do a taste test and decide we get just slightly more pleasure from one flavor of ice cream than another. However, introspection can be challenging, and there can be significant uncertainty in our reflections on value.

Let’s unpack a bit more what it means to assign value to a state of the world. Imagine yourself or someone you love feeling happy and reflect on the value of that state. You’ll find that your brain assigns positive value to that state. Similarly, if you imagine you or someone you love being harmed and reflect on the value of that state, you’ll find that you assign it negative value. Still, other things, like the state of the world where a new stone is added to a pile of stones on a random mountain, are likely to be assigned no value by your brain – that is, you consider the world to have equal amounts of value whether that stone is in that pile or not. In other words, when you reflect on certain potential states of the world, you have the internal experience (qualia) that they are good, bad, or neutral.

But how can you tell the difference between what you intrinsically value and what you value merely instrumentally? Unfortunately, our brains don’t automatically separate the things we intrinsically value from the things we value instrumentally. At first blush, valued states of the world feel the same, whether we value them intrinsically or not. To tell the difference, we need to use thought experiments. 

One way to work out whether something is one of your intrinsic values is by asking yourself, “if this were created, but it didn’t bring any other positive consequences, would I still value it?” For example, you surely value having food. But if you had a pile of “food,” but it contained no nutritional value, you derived no pleasure from eating it, it didn’t have any pleasant aromas or aesthetic value, and nobody else wanted it, would you actually still value it? Probably not – hence food is not an intrinsic value, despite being something that we all value (instrumentally). 

We can distinguish “valuing” something from being persuaded (on a purely intellectual level) that something is good. You might be convinced by a logical argument that something is objectively “good” in an abstract rather than intuitive sense, but still not actually value it; similarly, you might value something even though you’re convinced by a logical argument that it’s not a good thing. For example, imagine that a friend is trying to convince you that it’s bad to destroy plants. They make a strong argument, and you fail to find any flaws in it, so you accept it. You now would agree that you believe the phrase “it’s bad to destroy plants.” But even so, when you consider a state of the world where plants are being destroyed, your brain may not assign a negative value to it. You may feel that that state is neutral, despite being intellectually convinced that the phrase “it’s bad to destroy plants” is a fact. 

If you reject objective moral truth, you may think that we can’t logically prove that things are “good” or “bad” in this way; but some people are convinced by these arguments. Being purely intellectually convinced that something is good is different from actually valuing it – when your brain does its “is that valuable?” operation. However, being intellectually convinced that something is good or bad can eventually turn into valuing or disvaluing that thing. Whereas initially, you may merely fail to refute an abstract argument and decide that intellectually you agree with it, at some point, the inbuilt valuing mechanism in your brain may start to assign value that aligns with that argument.

We can also distinguish valuing from wanting (or desiring). You can want something but not value it – for example, a devout virgin nun might feel strong sexual desire even if she doesn’t value sex (i.e., her brain assigns a negative value to the state of the world where she’s had sex). Wants can also fluctuate moment-to-moment: for example, you might see a cupcake and immediately desire to eat it, but after a moment’s reflection (during which you look at the calorie count), you realize you no longer want it. Valuing, on the other hand, tends to lead to more stable conclusions. Your values might change over time, but we don’t usually value something in the morning and disvalue it in the afternoon. 

You can also value something but not want it at a particular moment. For example, even if you really value your own pleasure, you probably don’t want to experience pleasure at all moments – such as at a friend’s funeral. 

It’s often pretty easy to pick out what we value; it can be more complicated to determine which of our values are intrinsic rather than instrumental. It’s easy to mistake instrumental values for intrinsic ones. We often think that we intrinsically value a thing, only to discover, on reflection, that we only instrumentally value it. Here are some hypothetical examples:

• Althea believed that she intrinsically valued freedom, but she realized after a while that she only valued freedom because she thinks that people are happier when they’re freer. If people with more freedom had no additional happiness, she wouldn’t actually value freedom. So the happiness of others is an intrinsic value for Althea, but freedom is only an instrumental value (because she only values it insofar as it produces happiness).
• Brian loves his wife and thinks that he intrinsically values being married. However, he later realizes that what he values about marriage is loving and being loved – and that marriage just serves as a sign and symbol of that love.
  

We need to reflect carefully to work out what we intrinsically value. Imagine a person who is pursuing a prestigious law career. They’re sure that they value career success – but do they value it intrinsically? Perhaps they just value it instrumentally as a way to get other things – for example, money, the approval of family or peers, or as a way to influence the world for the better. Or maybe they are just mimicking the decisions of their best friend who is pursuing a similar career.

Conclusion

Valuism is a philosophy I just recently gave a name to, and I think it’s likely that some of the details will be adjusted and improved as I (and hopefully others) continue to develop the idea. 

Is Valuism new, though? Not really – I think that lots of people are already implicitly Valuists (without necessarily realizing it). But I’ve never seen the philosophy given a name, nor have I seen an attempt to work out what precisely the philosophy is in detail. I hope that this essay serves as a first step in that direction.

If the ideas in this essay have resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider whether you, too, are a Valuist. Though it takes time and careful thought to work out what your intrinsic values are, I’ve found that once you do, this can be a very fruitful approach to life. When you know what your intrinsic values are, this helps you ensure that you are pursuing what you truly value. And by adopting the Valuist idea of not merely pursuing your intrinsic values but pursuing them effectively, it orients you toward how to create a lot of what you value. 

When it comes to your altruistic intrinsic values, Valuism naturally suggests that you aim to do more good rather than less good as best you can (within the scope of the time and effort that you decide to put into your altruistic values following a careful balancing of your values), which you might consider a form of effective altruism (EA), narrowed to the scope of your altruistic intrinsic values. If your altruistic intrinsic values are strong, and you aim to use reason and evidence to try to effectively create a large amount of them in the world, then you may be a Valuist EA.

I find it satisfying that Valuism gives me a frame for my life: to create that which I intrinsically value. Perhaps it can provide a frame for your life as well.

If you read this line, please do me a favor and click here to answer one quick question.

A big thanks goes to:

• Kat Woods for giving me the idea to call this philosophy “Valuism”
• Amber Dawn Ace for co-authoring this piece – Amber is not a Valuist, but she was indispensable in helping me organize and explain my ideas
• The many folks who provided valuable edits on this piece (and the accompanying other parts to this series), including Travis Manuel, Adam Binks, Amanda Metskas, Clare Harris, David Hartsough, and Kat Woods.

I’ll end with a poem that Kat Woods created from words that Tyler Alterman wrote, which to me reflects some key elements of Valuism:

You’ve just finished the first post in my sequence of essays on my life philosophy, Valuism – click here to go to the second post.

Please note that Valuism is a work in progress. I may update this (and the other accompanying) essays as my views continue to become clearer or more accurate.

Footnotes

1. Note that there are different uses of the phrase “intrinsic value.” What I mean by “intrinsic value” is what some others have called “final value,” or “non-derivative value,” or “terminal value”. I do not mean simply “value that supervenes on intrinsic properties.”

2. I’ve heard it argued that “if there is no objective moral truth, then there is nothing that you should do, so even if you assign a small probability to objective moral truth (even if it’s an incredibly small probability!), you should act as though it’s true.” A flaw in this line of thinking is that even if there is nothing that you objectively should do, there are still things that you value, and so by only focusing on an objective moral truth that you think is unlikely to exist, things that are valuable to you are sacrificed in the process. So, for instance, you may miss out on creating a lot of happiness for yourself or other things that you intrinsically value (hence there is a real cost).

3. Another philosophical viewpoint is that moral claims are the sort of thing that can be true or false, and they just all are false. Either way, objective morality is rejected, leaving a philosophical gap regarding what to do in one’s life. The philosophical viewpoint I’m aware of that is most similar to Valuism is Individual Subjectivism, which is a form of Normative Subjectivism/Ethical Subjectivism. However, it is not the same as Valuism for a variety of reasons, as GPT-4/ChatGPT explains here.

Below is my attempt to list all human needs ranked according to their typical importance (from most important to least). Thanks for the idea, Maslow!

I’m defining a “need” here as something non-replaceable (i.e., you can’t just substitute it for something else), which, if substantially unsatisfied, would inhibit well-being for the vast majority of people.

You might say that you “need an iced tea” on a hot day, but it could be easily replaceable with lemonade or iced coffee, so iced tea is not a “need” in the sense that I mean. On the other hand, water (if you haven’t had any in a couple of days) really is irreplaceable, and a lack of it greatly reduces well-being. I’m using well-being here in a broad sense, to include everything from not dying to not feeling miserable to feeling happy.

Someone might say, “I need X if I’m going to achieve Y,” but that’s also not the sort of need I mean here (unless Y is “well-being” and X is something non-fungible).

My organizational scheme is to place needs into five levels, from highest to lowest average importance:

NEEDS

Level I: Immediate Survival

Level II: Extended Survival

Level III: Mental Health

Level IV: Relationships

Level V: Satisfaction

Immediate Survival needs come first because if you don’t satisfy them, you will quickly die. So all other needs usually take a back seat. Extended Survival needs are usually next in importance when they are not met (most of the time) because if you don’t satisfy them, you eventually die. The categories after that are harder to rank strictly, but in acute states of poor mental health, it is a lot harder to focus on relationships and higher forms of satisfaction, so I place mental health third. After that, I put relationships because they seem to create stronger needs for most people most of the time than the final level (satisfaction needs).

Beyond Level V there is another level, “Intrinsic Values,” but I do not include them as “needs,” per se, because while they are things people want, they differ a lot from person to person, and having them be poorly met often is not sufficient to inhibit well-being. For instance, someone may have an intrinsic value of people all around the world being happy, but they may not have their own day-to-day well-being limited by the lack of happiness of strangers around the world.

Note that it is definitely possible to attain higher-level needs while not having all the lower-level needs met. For instance, someone who is a prisoner could build meaningful relationships with other prisoners despite not having privacy or enough food to eat.

While most people have all or almost all of the needs listed below, the degree to which people experience the needs differs. Hence the order here should be taken as only very approximate. Moreover, some people fully lack some of these needs, especially items later in the list, so these should not be thought of as universal.

An additional factor is that how much people seek a need depends both on the importance of that need and on the perceived difficulty of satisfying it. For instance, someone who has not had any water in a day will likely be very focused on finding water if they believe it is attainable, but if they believe it is not attainable, they may be focused on other (higher up) needs.

List of Human Needs

Level I: Immediate Survival

1. Oxygen – an open airway (between our lungs and the outside world) and a constant supply of air that is at least 19.5% oxygen (and partial pressure of oxygen of less than 1.4 atm)

2. Functioning – freedom from severe/acute injury, bodily damage, and organ failure

3. Safety – no immediate threats from the environment, including from dangerous human or nonhuman animals

4. Temperature – protection from hypothermia or hyperthermia (i.e., one’s core body temperature needs to stay within 95-104 degrees Fahrenheit at all times)

5. Hydration -at least a few liters of water every three days

Level II: Extended Survival

6. Noncontamination – no more than trace quantities of poisons, radiation, and toxins

7. Lack of infection – the absence of severe infection with dangerous viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoans, helminths, and prions

8. Dryness – a sufficiently dry environment at least every few days (or else our skin will macerate)

9. Sleep – at least ~28 hours of sleep per week

10. Energy – at least ~25,000 calories every three weeks

11. Macronutrients – sufficient quantities of the three macronutrients each month (varieties of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) plus fiber

12. Macrominerals – sufficient quantities of the essential macrominerals every so often (sodium, chloride, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sulfur)

13. Microminerals – at least a tiny bit of the microminerals every so often (which probably include iron, zinc, iodine, selenium, copper, manganese, fluoride, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, silicon, vanadium, cobalt).

14. Vitamins – sufficient quantities of the 13 essential vitamins every few months (vitamins A, C, D, E, K, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B12, Folate)

Note: these nutrients/minerals/vitamins may not all be truly essential for survival, and there could be other nutrients, vitamins, or minerals that are essential that science doesn’t yet know about or that I just haven’t heard of.

Level III: Mental Health

15. Comfort – freedom from intense pain or discomfort (e.g., due to a pinched nerve, migraine, having to pee extremely badly, or a kidney stone)

16. Urge Satiation – freedom from an intense addiction or urge that can’t be satiated (e.g., a heroin user who is in the throes of a very strong urge to use again or someone who is very hungry when there is food just out of reach that they can’t get to)

17. Rest – the ability to stop exerting yourself once you have been engaged in a strenuous physical or mental activity for a long time

18. Cleanliness – a body and environment that doesn’t feel extremely dirty, contaminated, or infested

19. Understanding – not being confused about what is happening around you and being able to make sense of events.

20. Choice – the ability to make choices about what we do and don’t do (including freedom from imprisonment, enslavement, and extreme coercion or control)

21. Calmness – the sense that most of the time we, and the things that matter to us, are sufficiently safe (or else we are likely to have chronic anxiety)

22. Self-esteem – the sense that we have value and are capable of doing things that are worth doing

23. Hope – the sense that there will be value that we can create in the future and that the future will contain at least some good things (or else we are likely to be depressed)

24. Privacy – the ability to do things without being monitored and to have time to yourself without other people there (e.g., when showering, using the bathroom, or just when wanting to be alone)

Level IV: Relationships

25. Trust – a sense that the people in our immediate environment will not manipulate us, trick us, steal from us, use us, or hurt us.

26. Social interaction – social interaction with people we like and care about, and the sense that there are people who like and care about us

27. Community – the sense that we are accepted socially in at least one community, and ideally also that we are valued and have a role to play in that community

28. Sex – at least one partner we can engage in sexual activity with

29. Romantic love – a romantic partner we have a strong emotional bond with, who loves us and whom we love

30. Non-romantic love – family members or friends that love us and that we love back

31. Children – either children of our own, a partner we plan to have children with, or children of our relatives to help care for. Note: not everyone feels a need to have children, though many people do.

Level V: Satisfaction

32. Stimulation – sufficiently novel stimuli to keep us interested, or engaging tasks that bring us into a flow state (or else we become bored)

33. Enjoyment – the availability of activities that we enjoy

34. Meaning – goals, relationships, causes, or activities that feel important or meaningful to us, or that we feel we “live for” (or else our lives lack a sense of purpose and meaning)

35. Authenticity – the ability and confidence to behave as our authentic self without facing severe negative consequences

INTRINSIC VALUES

Beyond needs (i.e., non-fungible inhibitors to well-being), there are “intrinsic values,” which are things you desire for their own sake (not as a means to other ends) and which you would want even if they brought you nothing else. By definition, the things we intrinsically value, we want there to be more of.

Some intrinsic values are things we want for ourselves, others we want for our friends, family, or community, and still others we want for the world or universe.

Intrinsic values can be organized into something like 22 categories. Our categorization of them includes longevity, legacy, reputation, virtue, loyalty, justice, fairness, diversity, respect, caring, protection, nature, beauty, purity, spirituality, truth, learning, achievement, and freedom. Normally I would also include happiness, pleasure, and non-suffering in that list, but those bleed into needs, and so I would leave them out in this case to make the distinction between needs and intrinsic values clearer.

To learn more about your own intrinsic values, you can take our Intrinsic Values Test.

This essay was first written on July 28, 2021, and first appeared on this site on September 16, 2022.

Here are a number of reasons why altruism is often rational:

I. People can value altruism for its own sake:

1. Intrinsic values: as a psychological fact, most humans intrinsically value at least some things as ends (not merely as means to other ends) that are not about their own gain. For instance: people may value the reduction of suffering around the world or the flourishing of the people in their country. 

2. Warm glow: most humans find that it gives them happiness to do altruistic acts. I call this “the Lucky Fact” about human nature. It’s both important and very lucky (i.e., it didn’t necessarily have to be this way if our evolution had taken a different path). We feel good to see positive feelings in the people we like, and we feel good about ourselves when we cause good feelings.

II. Genuine altruism is also instrumentally useful:

3. Evolution: there are multiple reasons evolution programmed most of us with genuine altruism, even though it optimizes for gene spread.

Altruism is rewarded in settings of:

i) raising children

ii) iterated games

iii) tribal loyalty, with punishment of defectors

iv) deception detection

4. Relationships: altruistic people tend to have stronger, happier, more goal-aligned, and mutually beneficial relationships. Although, in theory, a purely selfish person can have highly beneficial relationships, it is much harder to make these expedient tit-for-tat relationships work.

5. Pre-commitment: suppose that there was a world of highly rational, purely selfish beings. If they were able, they might pre-commit (jointly, as a group) to become partially altruistic as a way to help solve difficult collective action problems. By uniting goals, they mutually gain.

This piece was first written on December 27, 2020, and was first released on this site on February 25, 2022.