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.

1) Belief because you think something’s true.

For instance, you may think that the evidence supports the idea that you will eventually find love, or you may feel convinced by logical arguments you’ve heard in favor of god’s existence.

2) Belief because you think it’s useful to believe. 

Regardless of whether you predict something’s true, you can predict that believing it will be more helpful than harmful to you in the long term, and so be motivated to believe for that pragmatic benefit.

For instance, you may intuit that you’ll be better off long-term believing that you will eventually find love (because that will make love more likely) or perceive that you’ll be happier believing in god (even if it turns out there is no god).

3) Belief because it feels good in the moment. 

Regardless of whether it’s true or helpful to you in the long term, you may be motivated to believe something because it feels good right now (or prevents you from feeling bad). 

For instance, you may feel comforted right now by thinking you’ll eventually find love or feel good in the moment, believing a god is watching over you.

Rationalists typically recommend striving to have your beliefs be of type 1: believing based on what’s most likely to be true.

Pragmatists often recommend aiming for type 2 beliefs: believing based on what’s ultimately most useful to you.

I favor striving to have type 1 beliefs rather than type 2 beliefs, in part because I intrinsically value truth, but also because I think that for beliefs in category 2 that are *not* actually true, there are typically some beliefs in category 1 that will help you just as much, but which have the advantage of also being true. So often (but not always), there is a low cost to replacing beliefs from 2 with beliefs from 1 that have the added benefit of being true.

I also think that if you allow yourself to indiscriminately hold type 2 beliefs, it makes it hard to suddenly switch to rigorous truth-oriented thinking when it’s important to figure out the truth (e.g., when you have to make a very important decision based on evidence).

On the other hand, many people have lots of type 3 beliefs, and all of us, myself included, have some type 3 beliefs. Whether you think that type 1 or type 2 beliefs are ultimately preferable, I think a valuable aspiration is to replace some of our type 3 beliefs with either 1s or 2s.

It’s very, very easy for us humans to delude ourselves based on what it feels good to believe at the moment because the reward cycle is so fast. Type 3 beliefs are immediately rewarding, incentivizing more such beliefs. But they are like the social media addiction version of believing, where you pursue what gives the greatest instantaneous reward rather than what’s actually good for you.

This piece was first written on April 20, 2024, and first appeared on my website on May 7, 2024.

According to YouGov polling, 41% of people in the United States think that it is the greatest country in the world. Others see the U.S. as a place full of arrogance, violence, and inequality. So, what’s the truth? 

The truth is that there isn’t a single notion of what makes something the “best.” To explore how great (or not) America is, we’ll start by looking at the question from multiple angles. We’ll see how the U.S. stacks up according to a number of important factors before we decide how great it really is:

 1. Technology 

The U.S. is among the best countries in the world for technology and business innovation. It currently ranks 3rd in the United Nations’ Global Innovation Index. It has the most startups worth over $1 billion (the 3rd most startups per capita) and is the originator of many technologies used globally. It is also considered by many to be the best place to create a tech startup. 

2. Violence

The U.S. is a violent place, given its level of wealth, with the 2nd highest number of gun-related deaths in the world and the 2nd highest rate of firearm-related suicides per capita. Among high-income countries with at least 10 million people, it has the highest number of homicides per capita.

️3. Prisons

The U.S. is a country of many prisoners, with the most people in prison of any country in the world and the 6th highest incarceration rate in the world (and the single highest rate among wealthy countries).

Violent crime charges are the number 1 reason people are locked up in the U.S. (though in some cases, the definitions for “violent” can include actions that don’t cause immediate physical harm, such as purse snatching and drug manufacturing). 

4. Wealth

It’s an extremely wealthy place with the highest nominal GDP in the world, as well as the highest GDP per capita (both nominal and PPP) of any country with over 10 million people. California’s economy alone is large enough that, if California were a country, it would rank 6th in the world by some metrics. And by some metrics, Texas’s economy is larger than Russia’s and would rank 8th.

About 9% of U.S. adults are millionaires, and 39% of ALL millionaires are in or from the U.S. 

5. Inequality

The U.S. is a fairly unequal place in terms of wealth and income, with inequality higher than 63% of countries (the Gini coefficient is 39 vs. a world average of 38). It’s the 5th most unequal among the 37 OECD countries, and the average income of the top 20% of earners is 9.4 times the bottom 20% (though note that inequality figures can be dependent on how taxes and social benefits are handled in the calculations).

The wealth gap in the U.S. is especially pronounced across racial lines, with the median Black household having $24,000 in savings vs. the median white household with $189,000 in savings (almost 8x more). 

6. Science

The U.S. is a very scientifically innovative place, with the most Nobel prizes of any country (the 15th highest per capita). It also has the 2nd highest annual patent applications (which is the 4th highest per capita), many of the world’s top universities, and the most clinical trials worldwide. 

7. Health

The U.S. is an unhealthy place relative to its level of wealth. It has the 10th highest prevalence of obesity (the highest of any wealthy country) and the highest rate of death from illicit drugs of any country where such data is known. Life expectancy in the U.S. is 79 years, which places it 47th highest out of 193 countries (so, it’s roughly in the top 25th percentile). 

8. Entertainment

The U.S. is arguably the most influential country in the world in terms of entertainment production, with the most movies made each year of any country, as well as the largest box office sales and the largest music market size. 

9. Healthcare

Many Americans feel let down by U.S. healthcare despite the U.S. spending the most per capita on healthcare of anywhere in the world. Roughly 48% of Americans rate the healthcare system as excellent or good, 31% as fair, and 21% as poor, which are worse ratings than surveys found in the 2010s.

The U.S. has exceptional top hospitals but bad price transparency (so it’s hard to know what you will end up paying) and inflated prices relative to a lot of the rest of the world. 

10. Desirability

The U.S. is rated the single most desirable place to move to for people worldwide looking to emigrate, though its ratings have declined somewhat. In terms of Americans wanting to leave, during the Bush and Obama eras, about 10% of Americans said they’d like to move to another country, and this jumped to 16% in the Trump era. 

11. Military

The U.S. spends a shocking amount on its military, with about 39% of ALL worldwide defense spending being by the U.S. At times its military power has been a stabilizing force worldwide (e.g., against the Nazis). On the other hand, the U.S. has also initiated a number of disastrous wars. 

12. Happiness

The U.S. is a pretty happy place. When Americans are asked to rate their “general satisfaction with life on a scale from 0 to 10”, the average score is a 7 (compared to an OECD average score of 6.7), which places the U.S. 14th highest among 41 OECD countries.

When asked to imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 to 10 at the top, with the top representing the best possible life for you and the bottom the worst possible one,

Americans place themselves at 6.9 on average, which is 16th highest out of 167 countries (i.e., 10th percentile). According to the World Happiness Index, which attempts to evaluate countries’ happiness by combining factors like GPD per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption, the U.S. is 16th out of 142 countries (i.e., 11th percentile). ️

13. Ideals

The U.S. has high ideals, some of which are reflected in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It sometimes lives up to these (e.g., through its strong personal freedoms), and sometimes has dramatically failed to live up to them (e.g., in its use of slavery and treatment of Indigenous Americans). 

Reaching a verdict: How great is the U.S., really?

So, is the U.S. one of the greatest countries? One approach to this question is to simply say that it can’t be answered because different countries differ in too many ways to make such comparisons possible. Another approach is to say that just one of the factors above trumps all the others.

Our preferred view, however, is to think of it in terms of your values: depending on what your values are, you will weigh the factors above differently. By some sets of values, the U.S. may arguably be the best country, whereas, by others, it doesn’t even come close.

At our organization, Clearer Thinking, we conducted research to figure out what it is that people value intrinsically (that is, what people value for its own sake – not as a means to other things). We’ve organized the results of that research into 22 different categories of common values:

Once you have a list of your own intrinsic values (which you can find out with our Intrinsic Values Test), then you can start to answer the question of how great the U.S. is.

For instance, if you have strong values related to protecting those who are less fortunate, you may give the U.S. lower marks due to its relatively high levels of inequality, whereas if you place more value on achievement, the U.S. may get higher marks due to being highly innovative in technology, business, and science.

It can be easy to base your judgments, including those about how good the U.S. is, on group identity rather than based on careful consideration of the facts and what you value. As political scientists Patrick Miller and Pamela Johnston Conover have said:

“The behavior of partisans resembles that of sports team members acting to preserve the status of their teams rather than thoughtful citizens participating in the political process for the broader good.” 

Employing a framework like the one outlined above, where you:

1. first attempt to impartially consider the facts,
2. then consider your values, 
3. and use the facts to inform how good or bad the thing is according to your values, can help you ensure that you’re deriving your conclusions thoughtfully and carefully, rather than simply deriving them from a desire (conscious or not) to conform to the expectations of group identities.

Ultimately, whether you conclude that the U.S. is great or not, we suggest basing your judgment on an evaluation of the facts plus careful consideration of your own values, not based on other people’s expectations.

This piece was first published on the Clearer Thinking blog on January 3, 2024, and first appeared on my website on January 10, 2024.

People like to think of things as “good” or “bad,” such as:

• Trans fats are bad for you, and broccoli is good for you.
• Lethargy is bad, but exercise is good.
• Being cowardly is bad, and having courage is good.

A problem with putting something in the “good” bucket of your mind, though, is that this can lead to the belief that the more of it there is, the better.

But most goods don’t work that way. It’s far more common for goods to diminish in value as you get more of them, or to be good up to a certain point and then stop being good at all, or even to harm you when you have too much!

By understanding the different ways that value can change with quantity, you can make more rational decisions. By grasping these concepts, you can optimize the way you allocate resources and efforts, avoid wastefulness, and strike a balance that promotes both personal well-being and efficiency – regardless of what decisions you have to make.

The next time you think about something being good, you can remember this article to add some nuance, go one step further, and think about what type of good it is.

Understanding Different Types of Goods

To help you make more rational choices, in this section, we’re going to give you a rundown of 4 types of goods that it can be helpful to know. They can be represented graphically like this:

You might find it useful to keep looking back at this chart as you read about the concepts below.

1️⃣Satiating Goods

Once you have a reasonable amount of these goods, there is no additional benefit to having more, but it also won’t hurt to have more (in realistic quantities). Although it is well-known that many goods have a point at which you will get no value from any more of them, there doesn’t appear to be a widely-used term for such goods. We like the phrase ‘satiating goods’ because your desire or need for them can be satiated.

For example, consider broccoli. Sure, it is probably healthy to swap 3% of what you eat for broccoli if you’re low in some of the nutrients it provides, but you will actually get no additional net benefit if you go from 20% of your diet being broccoli up to 30%. (Unless, of course, that final ten percent was substituted in place of something unhealthy, like trans fats or mercury-laden food.)

Satiating goods come up quite a bit. They are anything that you only need a certain amount of, and any excess won’t be used, such as:

• Healthy foods: Once you get a certain amount of any healthy food, eating more has no benefit. Yet, people tend to treat healthy foods as though they are unequivocally good.
• Seating in a venue: In a theater or conference venue, having enough seating for the expected audience is essential. But once there are enough seats for everyone, adding more seats doesn’t enhance the experience for attendees, though it doesn’t detract from it either (as long as the extra seating doesn’t spread people out too much).
• Life jackets on a boat: A boat requires enough life jackets for all passengers and crew. Once this number is met, additional life jackets do not enhance safety, as they are unlikely to be used.

2️⃣Diminishing Goods

It’s always good to have more of these goods, but the amount of value each additional unit gives you diminishes as you get more and more, but never reaches zero (for realistic quantities). 

One example is money: evidence suggests that the amount of life satisfaction you would get from doubling your income is fixed, regardless of what your income was before the doubling. This means that the extra life satisfaction you’d experience when going from $30,000 to $60,000 is equal to the extra life satisfaction you’d experience when going from $500,000 to $1,000,000. But the first one of those increases in life satisfaction is much cheaper than the second ($30k vs. $500k). So, the value of $30k to someone whose income is $30k is much higher than the value of that same amount of money to someone whose income is $500k. 

Of course, there’s a sense in which the value of money doesn’t diminish: each $1 you own is worth $1, no matter how many other dollars you have. But we’re talking about a more subjective value here; we’re talking about the value goods bring you in terms of your happiness or how important they are to you. When it comes to money, that kind of value diminishes as you get more of it. 

Diminishing goods are probably the most common. Other examples include: 

• Recreational travel: The initial trips and experiences can be highly rewarding, but over time, the novelty and excitement may diminish, even though they still offer enjoyment.
• Loving relationships: If you’re at 0 loving relationships and then you get to 1, you’ll be getting a much greater amount of value than if you’re at 100 and then you get to 101. However, your 101st loving relationship isn’t of no value at all.
• Hours of practice: If you’re starting a new hobby, you’ll find that your first hours of practice give you a large amount of value (in the form of improvement), but that value drops off over time as you have less to learn and make smaller and smaller improvements.

3️⃣Overdosable Goods

Like satiating goods, these are beneficial up to some amount, but, unlike satiating goods, further amounts of overdosable goods actually become harmful. Examples of this include:

• Medicines: Medicines are helpful in appropriate doses but typically harm you at higher dosages.
• Stretching: Some stretching, especially of body parts with low mobility, may be beneficial, but if you stretch an excessive amount, you might actually significantly increase the chance of injury.
• Courage: It’s good to have courage so that you can get yourself to do difficult things that are valuable – but past a certain point, courage yields no additional benefits and could lead to foolhardiness or getting into danger unnecessarily.

4️⃣Linear Goods

Finally, there are linear goods, so-called because the benefit you get from them increases at a constant (linear) rate as you get more of them. Every additional unit provides the same amount of extra happiness or utility; the marginal benefit does not change as more is acquired or consumed.

These are actually quite rare, and there is often disagreement over whether something counts as such a good. For example, they might include:

• Justice: If you value justice intrinsically, then you might think that more justice is always good, and the value of justice never diminishes or changes as more is acquired. 
• Happy lives: There is a debate over the moral value of bringing happy people into the world. Some people think it is morally good to do so (for example, see here). Other people think it’s morally neutral, while still others think it’s morally bad. Those who think it’s morally good to bring more happy people into existence typically also think that each new person is as valuable as all the others, and their value does not diminish or change as additional happy people come into existence.

The thing we want to point out here is that linear goods are quite uncommon, and their status is often controversial, despite the fact that people tend to think of ‘goodness’ as being linear all the time. But now you know better! Goodness more often gets satiated, diminishes, or even overdoses.

Of course, these are not the only types of goods out there! There are some more complicated goods with more complicated utility functions, but the ones discussed in this article are a great place to start, and reflecting on them will help you make more rational choices.

What should you do with this knowledge? 

Now that you know about different ways that goodness behaves, you can think more rationally about your goals and sources of happiness and avoid the trap of thinking that more of a good thing is always better. 

We suggest that you take some time to consider how these insights might affect your goals. Studies show that goals are more effective if they are approach goals (aiming for something you want) rather than avoidance goals (which focus on the negative), but if your goal is to acquire more of something (e.g., money) or do more of something (e.g., exercise), then you should ask yourself: “What kind of good is it that I’m after?”

• If you’re aiming for an overdosable good: It’s crucial to recognize the limit and avoid crossing it. This means being aware of and respecting recommended dosages, limits, or guidelines, whether it’s for physical activities, medical intake, or emotional states like courage.

• If you’re aiming for a satiating good: It’s not as crucial to know when to stop, but you can save yourself a lot of wasted effort by paying attention to when this good will stop being of value to you. Avoid wasting effort and missing opportunities for other value in your life.

• If you’re aiming for a diminishing good: These goods don’t have points at which they stop providing value, so it’s worth thinking even more carefully about when to call it quits. You should focus on noticing when the additional time, effort, or cost begins to outweigh the enjoyment or benefit you receive.

• If you’re aiming for a linear good: Remember that while they may seem straightforward in providing consistent benefits, they are rare and often subject to debate. It’s important to critically assess whether your pursuit really is a linear good for you and to be aware of the potential complexities. If you’re confident that the good really is a linear one and it has a high value for you, then you might just have found something worth dedicating your life to!

If you want to know more about what makes you happy so that you can better figure out which goods you might want to aim for, you could try our Clearer Thinking tool, Your Greatest Sources of Pleasure.

The next time you notice yourself thinking of something as being good, it may be worth considering what kind of good it is and asking, “When would I have enough?”

This piece was first published on the Clearer Thinking blog on December 20, 2023, and was published on my website on December 27, 2023.

Yet, there’s something extremely odd about wisdom: nobody agrees on what it means.

Here are six thought-provoking definitions of wisdom that l find it useful to reflect on:

1) Wisdom as self-consistency: 

Wisdom is an equilibrium where you find alignment between all combinations of your:

• values

• beliefs

• actions

Inspiration: Justin Shovelain and Elliot McKernon

2) Wisdom as causal control: 

Wisdom is the ability and propensity to consider complex sets of circumstances and then, through a deep understanding of causal mechanisms regarding oneself, humans, and the world, choose actions that will (on average) lead to beneficial outcomes.

Inspiration: Vervaeke/Ferraro

3) Wisdom = Knowledge x Goodness

If you know nothing, then you have no wisdom. On the other hand, if you use your knowledge purely to seek harm, you also lack any wisdom.

Wisdom is the combination of what you know and how good the ends are that you use that knowledge to pursue.

4) Wisdom as a virtue: 

Wisdom comes about through the accumulation of character strengths like:

• factual knowledge, self-knowledge, understanding

• first-hand experience, common sense

• compassion, altruism

• impartiality, non-attachment, objectivity, epistemic humility

• courage

5) Wisdom as search: 

Developing wisdom means pursuing the virtues and knowledge of the good, exploring the essential truths about life and the causes and effects of things, and practicing applying these insights to both theoretical and real-life situations.

6) Wisdom as perspective: 

Wisdom involves seeing a situation from multiple viewpoints and weighing the strengths and limitations of each one while incorporating knowledge of psychology, biases, ethics, and the nature of reality to make judgments that reliably produce flourishing.

This piece was first written on August 1, 2023, and first appeared on this site on August 9, 2023.

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. Featured image created using the A.I. DALL•E 2

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 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.

People that this essay is not about

Some Effective Altruists believe that objective moral truth exists (i.e., they are “moral realists”). They think that statements like “it’s wrong to hurt innocent people for no reason” are the sort of statements that can be true or false, much like the statement “there is a table in my room” can be true or false.

I disagree that there is such a thing as objective moral truth, but I at least understand what these folks are doing – they believe there is an objective answer to the question of “what is good?” and then they are trying to figure out that answer and live by it. 

This usually ends up being some flavor of utilitarianism plus maybe some moral uncertainty giving some weight to other theories such as protecting rights. In the 2019 EA survey, 70% of EAs identified with utilitarianism (though this survey did not distinguish between those who do believe in objective moral truth and those who don’t believe in objective moral truth but have utilitarian ethics anyway). I think this group of EAs that believe in objective moral truth is mistaken but that they are being coherent. They are the first group listed in the poll I took below, and they are NOT the group I am focusing on in this post. 

The flaw I see:

The group I am focusing on is represented by the second bar in the poll above. Many (most?) Effective Altruists deny that there is objective moral truth or think that objective moral truth is unlikely. But then I still go on to hear quite a number of such EAs say things like:

• “We should maximize utility.”

• “The only thing I care about is increasing utility for conscious beings.”

• “The only thing that matters is the utility of conscious beings.”

• “The only value I endorse is maximizing utility.”

(Note that by “utility” here, they mean something like happiness minus suffering, not “utility” in the Economics sense of preference satisfaction [unless they are preference utilitarians] or the Von Neumann–Morgenstern theorem sense.)

I find these statements by Effective Altruists very strange. If I try to figure out what they are claiming, I see a few possible disambiguations:

Possibility 1 – Contradictory beliefs: they could believe that maximizing utility is objectively good even though they don’t believe in objective moral truth – which seems to me to be a blatant contradiction in their beliefs. Similarly, they could be claiming that while they have other intrinsic values, they think they SHOULD only value utility (and should value all units of utility equally). But then, what does the word “should” mean here? On what grounds “should” you if there is no objective moral truth?

Possibility 2 – Misperception of the self: they could be claiming that while there is no objective answer to what’s good, the only intrinsic value they have (i.e., the only thing they value as an end in and of itself, not as a means to an end, that matters to them even if it gets them nothing else) is the utility of conscious beings (and that all units of utility are equal). In other words, they are making an empirical claim about their mind (and what it assigns value to).

Here I think they are (in almost every case, and perhaps in every single case) empirically wrong about their own mind. This is just not how human minds work.

If we think of the neural network composing the human mind as having different operations it can do (e.g., prediction, imagination, etc.), one of those operations is assigning value to states of the world. When people do this and pay close attention, they will realize that they don’t value the utility of all conscious beings equally and that they value things other than utility. While I can’t prove there is literally no such person on earth that only has the intrinsic value of utility, even for the most utilitarian people I’ve ever met, when I question them, I discover they have values other than utility.

And it stands to reason that human minds (being created by evolution) are not the sort of things that are likely to only value the utility of all beings equally. For instance, just about everyone I’ve ever met would be willing to sacrifice at least 1.1 strangers to save one person they love (even if they think that person wouldn’t have a higher than average impact or a happier-than-average life). I certainly would, and I don’t feel bad about that!

One very strong intrinsic value I see in the effective altruism community is that of truth – many EAs think you should try never to lie and are suspicious even of marketing. They sometimes try to justify this on utilitarian grounds (indeed, it can often be beneficial from a utilitarian perspective, not to lie). But this sometimes seems like rationalization – a utilitarian agent would lie whenever it produces a higher expected value of utility (but potentially only if it was using naive Causal Decision Theory (CDT) – H/T to Linchuan Zang for pointing this out), whereas many EAs make a hard and fast rule against lying (saying you should try to NEVER lie). This is easily explained as EAs having an intrinsic value of truth that they don’t want to accept as an intrinsic value (and so try to explain in terms of the “socially acceptable” value of utility).

As a side note, I find it upsetting when EAs try to justify one of their (non-utility) intrinsic values in terms of global utility because they think they are only supposed to value utility. For instance, an EA once told me that the reason they have friends is that it helps them have a great impact on the world. I did not believe them (though I did not think they were intentionally lying). I interpreted their statement as a harmful form of self-delusion (trying to reframe their attempts to produce their intrinsic values so that they conform to what they feel their values are “supposed” to be).

Possibly 3 – Tyranny of the analytical mind: they could be saying that while they may have a bunch of intrinsic values, their analytical mind only “endorses” their utility value. But what does “endorse” mean here? Maybe they mean that, while they feel the pull of various intrinsic values, the logical part of their mind only feels the utility pull. But then why should their analytical mind have a veto over the other intrinsic values? Maybe they believe their other intrinsic values are “illogical,” whereas the utility value is logical. But on what grounds is that claim made? If they could prove logically that only utility mattered, wouldn’t we just be back to claim (1) that there is objective moral truth, and they don’t believe that? 

Intrinsic values are just not the sort of thing that can have logical proof, and if they are not that sort of thing, then why give preference to just that one part of your mind? I’m genuinely confused.

Possibility 4 – Maybe they mean something else that I just don’t see. What else could they mean? I’d love to know what you think (or if you’re one of these people)!

It’s certainly possible that there are very sensible interpretations for their claims that I’m just not seeing.

In conclusion, for Effective Altruists who think there is objective moral truth, I think they are wrong, but I understand what they are doing (this post is not about them). But for ones that don’t believe in objective moral truth (which I think is the majority?) I think they are making some kind of mistake when their sole focus is utility. Of course, I could be wrong.

My personal philosophy – which I call Valuism (and which I am working on an essay about), attempts to deal with this specific philosophical issue (in a limited context).

But in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic! What do you think? If you are an EA who doesn’t believe in objective moral truth, but you’re convinced that only utility matters, what do YOU mean by that? And even if you don’t identify with that view, what do you think might be happening here that I might have missed or misunderstood?

Thanks for reading this and for any thoughts you are up for sharing with me!

Summarizing responses to this post

Edit (1 September 2022): after posting an earlier draft of this post on social media, there were hundreds of comments, some of which tried to explain why the commenter is utilitarian despite being an anti-realist, or presented alternative possibilities not delineated in the original post.

One thing that’s abundantly clear is that there is absolutely no consensus on how to handle the critique in the above post. There are a really wide variety of ways that people use to try to explain why they identify with utilitarianism despite not believing in objective moral truth.

Here are some of the most common types of responses given:

1. Responses related to Possibility  1 (i.e., addressing “contradictory beliefs“)

      1.1 Accepting contradiction: many people have contradictory beliefs (and contradictory beliefs may be no more common in moral anti-realist EAs than in other people), and some people are willing to lean into them. As one commenter put it: “many sets of intuitions are *wrong* if you take coherence as axiomatic.” Some people are just okay with self-contradiction.

      1.2 Beliefs that aren’t actually contradictory: my explanation of Possibility 1 might interpret  “we should maximize utility” differently than some people who say that phrase mean it. Here are potential some interpretations by which that statement might actually be consistent with anti-realist views:

           1.2.1 Personal preference: some people do not intend for statements like “we should maximize utility” to be representative of moral truth but instead mean it as an expression of a personal preference that they have for maximizing utility, or an expression of the fact that they will avoid feeling reflexively guilty if they aim to maximize utility, or a statement that they will have a positive emotional response if their focus on maximizing utility. However, these responses still seem to fall victim to another critique from the post, which is the arbitrariness of giving preference to certain feelings/preferences over other ones. 

           1.2.2 Metaethical constructivism: this is defined as “the view that insofar as there are normative truths, they are not fixed by normative facts that are independent of what rational agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice” (source). Some say this is “best understood as a form of ‘expressivism’“. Constructivism seems compatible with both moral anti-realism and utilitarianism, but it’s unclear to me how many effective altruists would hold this view (I think very few). 

           1.2.3 Valuing a different kind of utility: some people may mean “we should maximize utility” in reference to a different kind of “utility” than the classic hedonistic utilitarian interpretation of the word. For example, “utility” is sometimes used to mean a “mathematical function serving as a representation of whatever one cares about.” By such an interpretati, if someone says they are trying to maximize utility they are presumably referring to maximizing their own utility function (rather than some objective one) – and so they are not the focus of this post.

2. Responses related to Possibility 2 (i.e., “misperception of the self“)

      2.1 Second-order desires: people might not be misperceiving themselves at all but might instead be talking about second-order desires or desires about desires. As one commenter put it: “It might be that, though someone empirically does NOT possess desires consistent with maximising the utility of conscious beings, they possess the desire to possess these desires. They want to be the sort of person who does have a genuine utilitarian psychology, even if they don’t possess one now. This may explain the motivation to act as a utilitarian (most of the time) [despite being a moral anti-realist].” Though in this case, it’s unclear why they would want to or think they should give those second-order desire preference over their first-order desires.

      2.2 Unshakable realist intuitions: people might be acting and/or feeling as if utilitarianism is true while also believing (upon reflection) that moral realism isn’t true. One person commented that “many of our intuition[s] are based on a realist world even when rationally we do not believe in one, so it is easy to accidentally make arguments that work only in a realist world, and then try to rationalize the argument afterwards to somehow work anyway.”

      2.3 Mislabeling one’s metaethics: instead of misperceiving what they value, some people might be mislabeling themselves as moral anti-realists even though they aren’t. In other words, some people who call themselves anti-realists might actually be moral realists without realizing it (e.g., because they haven’t reflected on it). One commenter thought that this would be a common phenomenon: “They are expressing a real, but subjective, truth ‘It is true to me that everyone should maximize utility’…I think that ‘deep down’ you will find that in fact most effective altruists and indeed most people are moral realists but under-theorized ones. Even the anti-realists tend to act as if they were moral realists.”

      2.4 Choosing one’s own values: some argue that you can choose your values for yourself (though it’s unclear by what process one would make such a choice, or whether such a choice really can be made – it may hinge on what is meant by “values”). As one of the commenters put it: “It seems like you are assuming in [Possibility 2] that there is an objective answer to what a mind values, e.g. based on how it behaves. For one thing, it’s not clear that that is right in general. But a particular alternative that interests me here: one could have a model where one can decide what to value, and to the extent that one’s behavior doesn’t match that, one’s behavior is in error.” In other words, according to this view, maybe an individual themselves is the only person who can define their intrinsic values, and there is no objectively correct opinion for them to hold about this. But then, by what criteria (or based on what values) is a person deciding on what their values should be?

3. Reasons why Possibility 3 (i.e., “tyranny of the analytical mind“) may not be a confused approach

      3.1 Identifying with the analytic part of the mind: some people feel that choosing to endorse a particular framework (and choosing to endorse some values over other ones) is part of who they are – part of (or even the most important part of) their self-concept. In other words, the reflective part of them making that choice feels to them like it is “who they are” more so than other parts of them that have other preferences. Here’s how one person explained it: “For my part, the part of my mind that examines my moral intuitions and decides whether I want to act on them feels about as ‘me’ as anything gets.” Another person thought that ​endorsing some values over others makes sense because many people think that their “best” self would live “in accordance with the judgments they make based on arguments and thought experiments.” Another proposed explanation for people being guided by the analytic mind is that being guided in this way might be a normal feature of human psychology (which at least one person saw as needing no further explanation). Yet another explanation put forward was that some people can have a completely arbitrary “personal taste” for giving their analytical mind a veto over other parts of their mind (and, according to this argument, those people don’t need a further justification beyond their arbitrary taste).

      3.2 Simplicity and coherence meta-values: having fewer intrinsic values or having fewer intrinsic values that one allows to dictate their behavior can (some argue) be justified by having an intrinsic value of coherence, simplicity, or consistency. As one commenter put it: “I genuinely think I just have utilitarian intrinsic values. [It seems] relevant here that I also value coherence (in a non-moral sense, probably as an epistemic virtue or something), so if I find myself thinking something that is incoherent with another value of mine, I can debate & discard the less important one.” 

Possibility 4: Moral uncertainty

      4.1 Meta-moral uncertainty – believing that realism might be true: people who don’t identify as moral realists might still feel there is some possibility that moral realism is correct and might act as if it was correct (at least to some degree – say, in proportion to how much weight they give this possibility compared to other action-guiding beliefs). As one commenter put it: “Why do I keep donating (and doing other EA things), albeit to a lesser extent [since switching from moral realism to moral anti-realism]? The main reason is (meta) moral uncertainty: I still feel that it is possible that moral realism is correct, and so I think it should have some say over my behavior.”

      4.2 Misinterpreting moral uncertainty as anti-realism: People who think that their own beliefs are not necessarily objectively true (due to moral uncertainty) might conclude that they must be moral anti-realists, but they might be mistaken in calling themselves that. As one commenter explained it: “believing in moral objectivity is different from believing we are actually able to parse the true moral weights in practice.”

Possibility 5: Precommitment and cooperation arguments

      5.1 Benefiting from pre-committing to impartiality: some argue that acting as if classical utilitarianism is true might be justified on grounds related to resolving collective action problems (without having to believe that moral realism is true). For instance, one commenter wrote: “Being impartial between oneself (and one’s friends / family) vs. random people isn’t something that any human naturally feels, but it’s a ‘cooperate’ move in a global coordination game. If we’d all be better off if we acted this way, then we want a situation where everyone makes a binding commitment to act impartially. It’s hard to do that, but we can approximate it through norms. So EAs might want to endorse this without feeling it.” Though presumably, if this was the justification for utilitarianism, they would then switch to a different moral theory if they thought it better solved collection action problems (e.g., if they came to believe virtue ethics better solved collective action problems).

      5.2 Benefiting from pre-committing to preference utilitarianism: some commenters pointed out that preference utilitarianism could also be justified on self-interested grounds (this post was not intended to be about other forms of utilitarianism such as preference utilitarianism, but it was edited to clarify that only after some people had started commenting). As one commenter put it: “If we’re viewing morality as playing a counterfactual game with others, we should take actions to benefit them in a way essentially identically to preference utilitarianism. That doesn’t require any objective morality, it only requires self-interest and buying into the idea that you should pre-commit to a theory of morality that, if many people embraced it, would increase your personal preferences.” Though in such cases (if they were actually optimizing for self-interest), it seems strange they would choose a moral theory where their interests count equally to people they will never encounter and never be in collective action problems with. (Some might argue that this would make more sense if the person endorsed a form of multiverse-wide cooperation via superrationality, though it’s unclear how this resolves more concrete/real-life collective action problems).

Possibility 6: Social forces – as Tyler Alterman put it (when I was discussing this post with him – he’s named here with permission): “[I felt] that [for some EAs] their actual beliefs were at odds with the cultural norms of other smart people (EAs) that they felt alignment with, so they stopped paying attention to their actual beliefs. I think this is what happened to me for a while. There was an element of wanting to fit in. But then there is an element of – there are so many smart people here [in EA]… EA is full of Oxford philosophers – they must have figured this out already; there must be some obvious answer for my confusion. So I just went along with the obligation and normative language and lifestyle it entailed.” Social forces can be powerful, and in some cases, an explanation for human behavior can be as simple as: the other people around me who I respect or want the approval of do this thing or seem convinced this thing is true, so I do this thing and am convinced it is true.

This essay was first written on August 14, 2022, first appeared on this site on August 19, 2022, and was edited (to incorporate a summary of people’s responses) on September 1, 2022, with help from Clare Harris.

The claim can be quite hard to argue against because it has a certain vagueness that makes it hard to pin down what (if anything non-trivial) is really being claimed. Regardless, here are eight arguments I put together against the idea that everything we do is “selfish” or just for our own pleasure:

1. There are many actions that we take automatically and thoughtlessly due to repetition – not because of wanting or pleasure. Consider habits like brushing our teeth or sticking our phone in (for example) our left pocket (as opposed to our right one) when we’re done using it . These sorts of behaviors can be so automatic that we forget immediately afterward whether or not we’ve done these things. The point is not that these habits aren’t useful, just that at some point, we come to do them automatically without even considering whether they benefit us or not (as you may dramatically learn as you drop your phone on the ground when wearing shorts without pockets, thoughtlessly executing the “phone in pocket” habit).

Some other examples of automatic behaviors that we usually do without having any apparent desire/wanting/pleasure/pain involved: breathing, continuing to walk (once we’ve begun to walk), balancing, swallowing (once food is chewed), looking towards a sound (when there is an unusual but non-threatening noise), and social mirroring of body language.

2. Evolution didn’t select for humans based on how much they did what they “wanted” or based on who maximized their own pleasure. Rather, it selected for those whose genes spread most. Selfishness and pleasure are important tools that evolution used, but not the ONLY motivator. For instance, genuine altruism and a sense of obligation towards kin and allies can provide substantial evolutionary advantages!

3. Which pleasure are we talking about? For instance, we clearly sometimes forgo more pleasure now in exchange for extra pleasure later (e.g., by getting work done early) and other times sacrifice long-term pleasure for the short term (e.g., playing video games instead of studying when you have a big test tomorrow). So if people are just maximizing for their own pleasure, which pleasure are they maximizing for?

You might be tempted to reply, “that’s because we’re just adding up the pleasure across time to decide what to do.” But it seems clear that some people aren’t doing this (e.g., drug addicts who know their life is being ruined but sacrifice everything for the next fix). Many experiments in behavioral science and behavioral economics also contradict the idea that people are merely happiness maximizers. It’s too simple to say we “just do what gives us pleasure.”

4. “Wanting” shouldn’t be conflated with something bringing pleasure or reducing pain. They are quite correlated (since we tend to want pleasurable things), but pleasure and wanting are distinct. There are things we can really want (e.g., to “one day understand a mysterious scientific principle,” or “to keep promises” or to have certain things happen after we die) which are not about our pleasure.

Some neuroscience papers claim that “wanting” and “liking” can even be separately stimulated in rat brains. Whether scientists know how to do this or not, it seems we sometimes want things because they bring pleasure, but other times we just WANT them, so wanting and pleasure are not identical.

5. If the claim is weakened to say that we humans always do things that we have SOME sort of motivation to do, then (interpreting “motivation” broadly) the claim is trivially true. But it also doesn’t say anything – it’s right just by definition. Motivation is not identical to pleasure or wanting. So defining “wanting” to do something as having ANY motivation to do a thing doesn’t work because it renders the argument trivial. Similarly, if “self-interest” or “wanting” is just defined to be any pattern of brain activity that causes us to act, or any form of motivation at all regardless of what sort it is, then it is true (by definition) but also adds no information. What’s the point of even making the claim if it’s true by definition? In those such cases the claim can be actively misleading because “self-interest” has connotations to most people (even if you try to define those connotations away).

6. People sometimes do things that they know will bring them more pain than pleasure. For instance, a protestor who uses gasoline to set himself on fire might feel a spark of pleasure just before he lights the match, but he knows he will tremendously suffer until death. Or consider someone who takes an action for a social cause even though they know it will likely lead to spending the rest of their life in prison. Clearly, the person is sacrificing more happiness than they are gaining by such an action, yet some people do act in this way.

7. If we imagine a person who is extremely altruistic because they love making others happy, and we claim they’re “selfish” because they are doing it just to feel good, this is a very non-standard way to use the word “selfish.” It insinuates their behavior is somehow less good and is misleading in conversation. Of course, we can define words however we want, but if we define them in a way that is different than how others use a word, it makes discussion difficult and confusing.

What work does the word “selfish” do to explain things here? It’s clearer to just say (in this case) “the person is motivated by their love of helping others” and leave it at that. Most people would call that “altruism” (not “selfishness”) upon knowing all the details.

8. When we try to make the claim precise, it’s hard to do so (and, unfortunately, few I’ve encountered making the claim bother to try). We’re clearly not always maximizing long-term pleasure, but nor are we always maximizing immediate pleasure. Claiming we “always do what we want” is not the same as claiming “we always do what is pleasurable.” So maybe we just try the former claim?

If we try to restrict the claim to not be about pleasure or pain and just say, “we do what we want,” then how do we explain our numerous subconscious behaviors? And how do we define “want”? People often say they didn’t do what they “wanted,” so we can’t use colloquial definitions.

If “want” is broadened too much, then we’re back to just claiming that we do what we’re motivated to do; that is, we’re making a trivial definitional claim. So what is really being claimed by “we only ever do what we want”?
I think either nothing interesting or something false.

Now, all of this being said, clearly, people often DO act based on however they “want” to act (by a reasonable definition of “want”). And very often, people do act in such a way as to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It’s just that not all human actions fit that description, which is what the “everything is selfish” crowd claims.

To finish up, I’ll attempt to take the other side/steel-man the claim that “everything we do is something we want.” I think there is a psychological state of “desire for things to be a certain way” that drives many (though not all) of our actions. This desire for things to be a certain way is not the same as pleasure (though is often related to it) and the way we want the world to be is not always the way we think will make us happiest (though it often is). So, although I think that the generalization made by psychological egoism is false, I do think it’s approximately true, in a certain sense, a decent amount of the time.

This essay was first written on November 9, 2021, and first appeared on this site on November 12, 2021.

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.

1. Narratives Serve Power – powerful groups do tend to have a substantial influence on narratives, beliefs, and what’s “normal.” Something “obvious” or “objective” or “a fact” may just (invisibly) be a part of the narrative you’re immersed in and subtly be serving those in power.

2. Categories Bleed – just about any dichotomy or grouping will be leaky and imperfect (e.g., male/female, straight/gay). Some won’t fit any categorization, and there’s a subjective choice of where to draw boundaries. Yet we often treat categories as reality, forgetting their arbitrariness.

3. Intersectionality Can Matter – being perceived to be part of two categories can cause different treatment/perceptions than the sum of the effects of each category alone (i.e., there is non-linearity). A Chinese woman’s experience isn’t just Chinese experience + female experience.

4. Truth Is Elusive – many assumptions are baked into our interpretations. The truth is incredibly complex; epistemic modesty is warranted. Many have attempted to (or claimed to) use “science,” “objectivity,” or “rationality” yet have come to conclusions that were incorrect and harmful.

5. Values Differ – it’s very hard to argue in a principled way that one set of common intrinsic values is superior to another. For instance, if one culture values honesty and loyalty more than other values, and another values freedom and happiness instead, who’s to say one of those cultures is “right”?

6. Word Choice Can Have Consequences – for instance, suppose person P takes action X, and person Q dies. It matters if society calls that action “murder,” “manslaughter,” or “an accident.” Beyond legal questions, it matters socially (for the victim’s family and the perpetrator).

7. Universals are Rare – people claim to find universals (in economies, societies, individual psychology), yet almost none of them stand up to scrutiny as being actually universal. Truth turns out to be contextual with lots of variation. Even our theories of physics get supplanted.

8. Normal Is Not Better – what’s “normal” is often considered superior, and yet normal in one place and time may be weird in another. Much of human behavior is trying to fit in/be normal/be in fashion, which can help you to be liked, but normal is in flux and is not inherently better.

9. Art Is Arbitrary – stories tend to be linear and to follow the hero’s journey, architecture has a certain look based on location, and paintings in one era tend to be in a similar style to each other. But stories, art, etc., can still be compelling when fragmented, non-linear, convention-violating, or subversive. A much broader range of things can produce the effects of art than the limited array we usually see created.

10. Our Qualia are Unique – it is genuinely extremely hard to know what it’s like to be another person or to have had their experiences. We tend to overestimate our ability to relate. Those who have had an experience often do have unique information critical for understanding it.

11. The Oppressed Should Be Helped – some people continue to be oppressed, and those who are should obviously be helped. It’s important to remind ourselves of this oppression and try to stop it.

12. Context Often Matters – knowing who was saying something, what point in history they were saying it, who the audience was, the history of people saying similar things, and so on, can substantially change the meaning of what was said.

13. Some Things Are Said Without Being Said – meaning can be implied without saying something directly (e.g., through dog whistles, euphemisms, and by hinting at something). Even the omission of an idea that one would expect to have been said can imply a meaning.

The elements I listed above related to postmodernism are those that I find most helpful or useful. On the other hand, while I’m far from an expert on the topic, my perspective is that a number of aspects of postmodernist thought are quite unhelpful or mistaken.

Here is what I most dislike about the postmodern way of thinking (and related ways of thinking, like through the lens of critical theory):

1. It can ignore genuine progress made towards truth and a better society.

2. It can assume that word usage/language choices are more powerful than they are.

3. It can deny useful categories.

4. It can be self-undermining (if you apply its critiques to itself).

5. It’s not (I think) that effective at changing the problems it points out (since its proposed solutions to these problems seem, in my opinion, unlikely to achieve their own aims).

6. It can overemphasize the importance of certain problems over other equally or more important ones.

7. It uses obscure language/complex sentence structure that makes it confusing or even impenetrable.

8. It can be overly cynical about society and human nature.

9. It can seem to be in denial that many valuable things were discovered using reason, rational thinking, science, etc., and some of these have greatly improved people’s lives.

10. It can view society through too much of a zero-sum lens, not sufficiently acknowledging the importance of the many opportunities for positive-sum interactions.

11. It can overemphasize the value of information gained from the personal experience of individuals relative to aggregate information and scientific evidence.

12. It can treat large groups as monoliths, as though there really is an “X” perspective (for some large group, X).

13. It sometimes uses non-standard definitions for common words in a way that leads people to draw confused conclusions (assuming the conclusion applies to the common-sense meaning when it only applies to the non-standard one).

14. It can sometimes come across as idealizing those who are oppressed, creating weird incentives for some people to emphasize (or, in extreme cases, exaggerate) the oppression they experience in order to gain social points, or it can even create competition over who is more oppressed.

15. It can act as though feelings are facts, and that person A being upset by person B’s actions or words implies that A was wronged by B.

16. It doesn’t do a good job of summarizing itself, meaning that it can take a large time investment to begin to have a sense of what it even is.

17. It can fall into moral relativism and so runs the risk of being too reluctant to condemn harmful cultural practices of some societies (e.g., a practice of sometimes killing people for having premarital sex).

Overall, while I think that postmodern thinking contains some important ideas, I also believe that reliance on it tends to make things more confused rather than less and that many of its proposed methods and solutions don’t stand up well to scrutiny.

This piece was first written on March 29, 2021, and first appeared on this site on July 2, 2023.