Thought experiment time!
Suppose you were offered the following opportunity: Using highly advanced, but completely safe, psychological methods, your values and personality can be permanently altered.
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The changes would be minor enough that you are not just being overwritten, replacing your mind with a different person; your parents would still recognize you as you. But they would be big enough that you would make different life choices and have a different life trajectory.
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All of the changes would be in the direction generally considered "good": you'd become happier, more diligent, more conscientious, more prosocial, less neurotic.
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Your preferences and interests would change somewhat: if you like history, you might come to like math instead. The people who you vibe best with would also change somewhat, and the people you're romantically attracted to (assume you're single). Your sense of humor might change.
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All of those changes would be the result of increasing the new preferences more than muting the old ones. It's not that you stop enjoying history, it's more that you get _really_ into math, such that history just doesn't seem as interesting as it used to.
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None of these changes would make you "worse off" as assessed on an absolute scale (ie for all shifts from preferring X to preferring Y, a neutral observer would think that someone who likes X is generally better off than, or about as well off as, someone who likes Y.)
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Would you take someone up on this opportunity?
If someone was offering to pay you for doing this, how much would you need to be paid to make it worth it?
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Replying to
Is there an incremental option to try and see how it affects my life concretely in small amounts (with the understanding that those small effects are permanent)? If so, I would feel pretty inclined to give it a try. If not, I might still do it but I'd have to think much harder.
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This is a good question!
Let's say yes. You can decide to stop at any time.
However, the further you go, the more the changes will seem good to you, because of the nature of this situation. So there is a slippery slope effect.
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I *think* that's fine? Even knowing that I'm heading down a slippery slope seems okay-ish, as long as the change itself can be incremental so I can verify that my experience seems to be actually improving. I think time to adjust to the changes feels important, too.