Here is Xan’s response to my assertion that goals can be evaluated on their relative merits:
Rocks come in all different sizes. They can certainly be *ordered* by size. This is a relative comparison. It becomes a set of preferences as soon as you say something like "bigger is better." But before you say that, it's just a fact about the world. How can you compare the relative "merit" of a rock, before you have declared what a "merit" consists of?
What is a "merit" without a set of preferences backing it? How do you even know which way is up? There is literally NO way of saying A is better than B without first *assuming* some notion of betterness, some fundamental ranking of alternatives.
By preferences, I really just mean a ranking of possible alternatives. To have preferences is to prefer some states of the world to others. There may be a lot of logic underlying one's preferences; all else equal you may prefer bigger rocks, or you may prefer to pursue goals that are more likely to pan out, etc. But the essential thing is just that a set of preferences *asserts* a ranking over alternatives.
I get what you’re saying: The only way of judging “betterness” is by preferences (arbitrary, incidental), and so someone whose goal is to gain admission to a mythical kingdom of unicorns that doesn’t exist and isn’t possible to gain admission to is no “better” than someone whose goal is to make fun of people who try to gain admission to a mythical kingdom of unicorns, even though when you evaluate them based on metrics like “possibility of achieving” or “amount of control we have over it,” one clearly “wins.” But it only “wins” on those metrics based on preferences because there’s nothing fundamental or objective about the metrics and they still come down to whether you’d prefer greater “possibility of achieving” or “control.”
I’ll quibble and say that I think goals can be evaluated to some extent based on logic, without having to make an appeal to preferences. Here’s how: A goal is by definition an attempt to achieve something, right? If so, then if a goal is unattemptable (say, tasting sound) or unachievable (say, winning Elvis’s affection), then we can say that that goal is by definition “bad,” or at least worse than goals that are attemptable or achievable, right? What I’m getting at is that it seems that there is something inherent in the definition of “goal” that suggests preferences might not be the only evaluative criteria for a goal.
But even if you dispute that, we can still evaluate the relative “merits” of goals where merits are based only in that ugly word, preferences. Yes, it’s neither fundamental nor objective, but it’s still a way of evaluating goals.
What makes me uncomfortable about your argument is that the conclusion seems dangerously close to “just pursue whatever goals you want and don’t bother with what goals other people are pursuing because they can’t logically be any better or worse than any other goals.” But I don’t think you can defend that except by getting semantic about the word "better" because even though the “betterness” is grounded in something arbitrary (but not at all random) like “preferences,” it’s still there, and we can still evaluate it on that basis.
I feel comfortable making lots of assumptions about what people share as preferences. That doesn’t make them “fundamental” because they are still grounded in the arbitrary goal of gene propagation, but it gives me another basis from which to argue because I have some knowledge about preferences. For example, I’m comfortable assuming that people prefer more resources over less, more life over less, more possibility over less, etc. etc. And that actually gives me a lot of power to (pretentiously) evaluate the “merits” of goals.
This is what it comes down to: I *can* argue that, all else equal, pursuing a goal that is higher on some metrics like attemptability or achievability is, by their own preferences if not by definition, “better.” I don’t think you disagree with this. I don’t think we’re disagreeing at all—we’re probably just tripping over each others’ semantics.
(By the way, here’s one example of where “prefer” really annoys me as a term if we’re assigning it this tautology: Someone could say I “prefer” pursuing Elvis’s affection, seemingly giving it some kind of invincibility, but when you actually evaluate their more “fundamental” preferences [more possibility over less, etc.], you’d find that they really probably wouldn’t “prefer” that goal over others.)
This is what it comes down to (part II): I can logically evaluate goals all day long based on knowledge of what people “prefer,” but logical evaluations are unlikely to change a damn thing.
On the other hand, if it’s true that people will change behavior to avoid being mocked, then maybe by mocking people’s stupid goals I can up the universal “satisfaction with life” quotient. Do you buy that? If so, another philosophical question: Does that mean it’s immoral NOT to mock people’s stupid goals (provided I can say with reasonable certainty that their goals are in fact not satisfaction-maximizing)?
The bottom line for me, again, is that (1) all this logical thinking we’re doing is, for me, an amusing, exhilarating challenge – satisfying my preferences – and (2) I’m glad that changing-behavior-via-logic (even my own) is not a goal of mine because I’m highly unlikely to achieve it, i.e. the goal is [relatively] dumb.
+++
Here’s Xan on the weirdness of my goal/path:
The question is whether the average person, starting with the sorts of preferences average people have, will be compelled to learn a bunch more about the universe once they learn the fact that there is no deeper purpose to be found there. To say that this is unlikely, I'm allowed to employ the average person's preferences. I think it's uncontroversial to assume that people are interested to learn about the Meaning of Life, in which case they are less interested in exploring the universe when they don't think the Meaning of Life is going to turn up.
Maybe I’m just narcissistic – wanting to figure out how/why I’m different – but this actually remains to me your most interesting point. But aren’t you an outlier in this too, Xan? You clearly don’t think there’s Meaning to be found, but you’re also clearly interested in these questions. How do you explain yourself? And come to think of it, aren’t most scientists and academics then outliers? Basically, I’m not sure I buy that this is an unusual path.
This is one of those murky philosophical areas where we can only speculate (B.S.) about why we have the preferences/desires/feelings/inclinations that we do. Here’ll be one maybe reasonable-sounding explanation:
Maybe I pursue topics like evolution and economics and philosophy and biology and ecology and astronomy because the more I understand and appreciate the messiness-combined-with-order of the universe, the more I feel things like awe and humility and confusion and powerlessness. In summary, the more I feel alive and actually a part of this mess.
A less romantic explanation: Maybe studying these topics gives me a feeling of “stepping outside” or looking at Reality objectively or detachedly, thereby giving me some delusional sense of power or control over the situation.
###
Postscript
It should be said publicly that Xan is the single best commenter a boy could hope for: His reading comprehension is extraordinary, he is charitable when I say things casually, he is careful to stick to the main points of my argument (and he knows what they are!), he is usually not trying to dismantle my points but to make me look at them a different way, but when dismantling my arguments is called for, he does so remarkably gently, his comments are funny, and they are wicked smart. My only complaint is that I wish he would show more emotion.
If that didn’t make you want to follow Xan’s blog, then you might be dumb.
