vault backup: 2025-12-13 17:58:54

2025-12-13 17:58:54 -05:00
parent 8fba906c54
commit 9a094fea3e
7 changed files with 182 additions and 9 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+---
+id:
+aliases: []
+title: Personal Values
+tags: []
+---
+# Personal Values
+
+Personal values are subjective preferences for behavior
+that affect one's decisions in ways that an objective analysis could not predict.
+
+> [!example]
+> People are more likely to return a wallet
+> with more cash than less.
+
+Personal values are the difference between one's normative and descriptive [[utility]].
+
+Maintaining strong personal values aids decision-making
+by allowing one to trivialize problems
+that may be overwhelmingly complex when analyzed objectively.
+
+For example:
+
+For an unbiased individual,
+to calculate the utility of a second bowl of ice cream---
+to determine its relative benefit compared to its harm---
+requires a thorough understanding and accurate quantization of their
+* recent and future physical activity
+* fitness goals
+* preference for ice cream relative to other desert options
+* natural tendency to form unhealthy habits
+among many others.
+
+For an individual who strongly values their health and physical fitness,
+the knowledge that they would be acting in violation of those values
+skews the calculation so far to the negative
+that internal debate is unnecessary.
+
+Frequently, individuals are capable of effectively rationalizing their values
+(it's not difficult to imagine that all variables considered,
+the objective utility of the additional ice cream is negative for most people).
+In this way they are behavioral [[heuristics]]:
+subjective utility
+
+***
+
+_Having_ a value, simply acknowledging that some behavior is good,
+requires no effort, and has no perceivable effect on the person.
+Everyone _has_ dozens of values.
+
+_Maintaining_ a value means acting according to it so often
+that doing so is instinctive.
+
+***
+
+Personal values, as commonly described,
+tend towards benevolence (charity, family)
+or at least individual good[^1] (health, physical fitness),
+but like habits, people maintain bad values as often or more.
+
+[^1]: "good" is a **societal** value,
+    a common value that individuals are expected to maintain.
+
+Angry, wasteful, and unhygienic people
+maintain bad values that cause them to act the way they do,
+contrary to their own objective interest.