Genuineness, Existential Selfdetermination, Satisfaction: pick 2

posted on 2021-11-21

imagine you have a world where one person wants the moon to be painted blue, and another wants the moon to be painted red.

they both mean the current actual physical moon as it exists now; they both refuse any "cheating" option such as duplicating the moon or duplicating reality, and they don't want their minds changed, nor to compromise.

there's three ways to resolve situations like this:

you sacrifice genuineness: you somehow make both of them believe, mistakenly, that what they want is satisfied. maybe by unknowingly giving them eye implants that change what color they see the moon.
you sacrifice existential selfdetermination: you ensure the situation never happens to begin with, that no two persons will ever want the moon to be painted different colors; or maybe you brainwash one of them after the fact.
or, you sacrifice satisfaction: you let them want what they want, and let them see what the moon looks like, such that at most only one of them will ever be satisfied.

you can't have all three of those things.

many hedonists will happily sacrifice genuineness; authoritarians like to sacrifice existential selfdetermination.

as for me, for ∀V, i ultimately sacrifice satisfaction: while people can choose to become mistaken about things, the default is that they get to access the actual true state of things.

posted on 2021-11-21