Comment by generic on Too busy to think about life · 2011-12-22T16:04:58.102Z · LW · GW

"for me mating is the terminal value." You mean that you act close to as if it was?

I think that you get pleasure from many other things too, and even if you would loose the interest in mating, you would go on getting pleasure from many of those other things.

I rationally think that I value the happiness of myself and others as a terminal value. I also get pleasure of it. To some extent this increases my mating chances but some of it decreases. The same seems to be true to people similar to you, although to a smaller extent: you are in between these two positions.

What is a" value"? Is it what I think as my value and try to achieve, or is it the thing towards which my genes (and memes?) are optimized? I think that it is closed to the former, but in my case neither of them is exactly mating, although I am a male.