Epistemic Status: I wrote the bones of this on August 1st, 2022. I re-read and edited it and added an (unnecessary?) section or three at the end very recently. Possibly useful as a reference. Funny to pair with "semantic stopsigns" (which are an old piece of LW jargon that people rarely use these days).

You might be able to get the idea just from the title of the post <3

I'll say this fast, and then offer extended examples, and then go on at length with pointers into deep literatures which I have not read completely because my life is finite. If that sounds valuable, keep reading. If not, not <3

The word "value" is a VERB, and no verb should be performed forever with all of your mind, in this finite world, full of finite beings, with finite brains, running on a finite amounts of energy.

However, if any verb was tempting to try to perform infinitely, "valuing" is a good candidate!

The problem is that if time runs out a billion years into the future, and you want to be VNM rational about this timescale, you need to link the choice this morning of what to have [...]

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First published:
January 4th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z2uqkmohWKvgytsy6/axiological-stopsigns

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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“Axiological Stopsigns” by JenniferRM

LessWrong (30+ Karma)