- Merge some stuff from Towards “Game B” (at least, about rivalry) into the systems section
- DAPs are a person's "values". Each points to a choice the person made to adopt a policy. This is a choice with real trade-offs, which indicates what's most valuable to them. For examples, in adopting the DAP of "being vulnerable with friends", I'm saying this is more valuable than other things I could attend to in that context. That choice I made can be used to assign value to external events and objects, like friends and quiet rooms.
For a companion doc
In part two I'll cover more in the cognitive science and philosophy of values
- A model of agency that shows how meaning nuggets shape our choices
- Which attention tips are brought to mind when, and how this limits the number of meaning nuggets that a person can have at any time in their lives
- The details of how values become reasons, and how reasons lead to choices, and what this all has to do with the experience of free will.
- Difference in the emotions that are commonly felt about social visions, vs. meaning nuggets
And in part three, the sociology of values
- DAPs are a type of knowledge. Each is an idea they got somewhere. For instance, it might have come as a verbal tip from a friend, or from watching how a friend lives, or from their own emotions (which are attention tips that a person's subconscious gives them).
- The story of how our culture got confused about values and appreciations: why are we so fuzzy about our values, as opposed to our plans and goals?[7]
- Questions about values in nonhuman entities like teams, corporations, AIs, markets, or law;
In part four, the impact that articulacy about values can have in social science and design
What we see here is that each link along this chain has a kind of focused, clear benefit, except the last lake.
The last element in the chain, responding to the world situation is something that is part of my lived concrete experience of the good life.
I wouldn't write these essays. If I didn't think it would spread values articulacy. This fact that I do these things for some clear benefit, and wouldn't do them otherwise says that the actions and policies involved are not actually part of my conception of the good life. Yes, they serve the good life, But they aren't really part of it. In fact, driving itself, or essay writing isn't even part of my conception of the good life. It takes many logical leaps to get from these actions or policies to where they fit into my conception of the good life.
One difficulty in listing someone's DAPs: they can change a lot. Here's a story where someone adopts a new DAP:
Most of us know how to map someone's goals. We could interview them, listing goals. When we show them the list we've made, they'd say "yes, those are my goals" and we'd have captured something about the person. We want a similar feel for meaning nuggets.
A followup essay (called ), will cover why our lives (even the lives of the rich) aren't already chock-full with meaning nuggets—why most of us aren't able to live at the frontier.
- Second, there's a kind of publicity campaign that says that it should feel meaningful to fulfill a social vision or to spread one—e.g., to be a "good man" or a "good feminist". To make this distinction, we must question that campaign.
Here's two examples from my own life:
- When I pay attention to how people close to me are growing and changing—I feel hopeful, life becomes an adventure, I get to know the people better, I can conceptualize a journey we are on together, I am frequently moved by what they say, and so on. But I don't do this for any of those payoffs specifically.
- Similarly, orienting my career so I can respond deeply to the situation of the world I find around me gives me a sense of power, hope, caring, adventure. These benefits are diffuse and hard to name.
This doesn't mean we should discard social visions: theoretical ideas about the good life serve an important function.