So when society tells you what you should feel, you obey? Society is an overly broad term. You assume it's a rather large set of people, but it might just be yo

So when society tells you what you should feel, you obey? Society is an overly broad term. You assume it's a rather large set of people, but it might just be your aquaintances and some talking heads. I think any ill defined concepts in your moral understanding are like security holes, allowing for inconsistencys to slip in. And society somehow comes to mean a different thing in each case. It's a prime example of an inconsistent concept. Along with "the public", "the greater good", etc. You get my bend. I think we're getting into value systems right now. Feeling better. Happiness, right? Exitement. Tranquility. Lack of Guilt. Joy. From AI i've learned that actors work optimally when they optimize a key metric. That metric has to be defined properly (So what makes this robot morose?), and there has to be a heuristic for estimating the changes to that metric given an action. I think we work very similarily. Your value system, whether you value joy, prestige or altruism is the optimization metric. Your emotional apparatus (it matches input to output) is the quick, over the thumb heuristic you use. I for example am optimizing for Happiness. Creating things makes me happy. Solving tacky problems makes me happy. Helping other people makes me happy (If they choose to let me help them, and if they are thankful towards me afterwards). Learning useful things makes me happy. It's quite likely that some of these things will benefit others greatly, but that's a side effect, not the moral justification of my actions. I honestly don't feel bad about that kind of motivation, because it makes sense.