Ryan Buchanan investigates
How can we reconcile competing values?
Although life may be random at times, people are not. We operate always under a matrix of principles which guide our decisions. In order to make or solidify meaning in our lives, we might decide to write out our values explicitly, and examine them. In the simplest cases, it is easy to decide between e.g., what is good vs. what is evil." However, in practice, the ethical calculus becomes a lot subtler; consider, for instance, the case of Romeo and Juliet, who had to decide between true love vs. loyalty to the family; as we all know, this tragic comedy ended in a double-suicide. Or, take for instance, the classic trolley problem:'' if I pull the lever, I save ten people, but it comes at the cost of deliberately killing a single person.
The purpose of the investigation here is a microcosm of the quest for eudaimonia. Because life is a complicated network, there is no simple and universal path towards a good life, but surely we agree always that the good is better than the bad, if it were a fiat choice. Yet, oftentimes, good and bad do not look like black and white, but a million hues of gray intersecting on a million axes.
Research
In research, consider the following dilemmas:
- Novelty vs. familiarity
- Transparency vs. rigor
- Depth vs. breadth of knowledge
Choosing Between Values
We may (implicitly or otherwise) hold one of the two values in higher regard, in which case it wins in most situation; however, it is not a binary choice, but a fuzzy one. Say something is 2/10 on the creativity scale and 9/10 on the familiarity scale. Would you prefer this, as a creative person, to a choice which is 3/10 on creativity vs. 5/10 on familiarity? Well, it depends on how heavily you weigh the preferred virtue over the other; if one creativity point is worth 4 or more familiarity points, then you've taken on a pretty radical and hard-lined perspective.
Aristotle oftentimes spoke of a golden mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency in which virtue is found. However, what "balance" may mean for one person may not resonate with another.
Sacrifices
We all must make certain sacrifices in order to attain virtue; in one person's case, this could mean being less curious in order to be more productive, or in another person's case it could mean giving up certain luxuries in order to provide more security for the future.
Time
The western world, by and large, equates time with currency; spending time on anything entails not only sacrificing the time itself, but the possibility of spending it differently; if you want to become an elite athlete, you are going to have to make some serious time sacrifices; it would be very difficult to be a pro athlete, a best-selling novelist, a musician, and so on and so forth. There are costs and benefits to specialization, but in the modern age it is the specialist who provides the most valuable services.
To "be busy" means to sacrifice or occupy your time; the people concerned with this business are the company you keep. The unique way in which you spend your time reflects the values you have chosen, and prioritized, and at the end of the day determines your lifestyle.
Recovering from Neglect
When one or more values has been betrayed, abandoned, or neglected, one will feel deeply misaligned with his or her sense of inner virtue. For instance, if I choose to eat nothing but junk food, and therefore excessively prioritize sensory pleasure over health, I will begin to feel it.
In the productive and intellectual pursuits, this manifests as burn-out, which is a clear signifier that one needs to re-prioritize what is meaningful. In the most severe cases of burn-out, one does not even wish to return to the task ever; yet, if it is a meaningful pursuit, this too will lead to a sense of emptiness.
These gentle sways from over-stimulation to under-stimulation, from hunger to fullness, are gentle suggestions to refocus, and rebalance.
Discussion
Andrius: Ryan, I have been learning about Active Inference and you may be, too, because it models subtle issues in such choices, such as whether to update our beliefs or update the world, and the relevance of certainty and precision, and the choice between familiarity and novelty.
- Here is a presentation where familiarity vs. novelty came up: Jake Hooper. Art as a Vehicle for Encoding Archetypes: Neurobiological, Cultural, and Psychedelic Perspectives.
Andrius: The three minds presents the investigatory mind the choice between embracing the questioning mind or the answering mind. We have collected 280 examples at Theory Translator and I invite you to contribute more. So this can help show that many choices are not symmetric but qualitatively involve two very different ways of approaching life. My paper An Allegory: The Solipsistic Self as the Hamiltonian of a Noninteracting Fermion describes the three minds and relates them to three quantum symmetries.
Andrius: You are collecting quite a few examples and you could set up pages here where you collect more examples, look for patterns and start to classify them. I am curious what you would find. I describe the distinctions I have noticed in my video 8 Operations Address 6 Needs (Maslow's Hierarchy) I look forward to your progress in investigating!