I want to wirehead. Why do you think I’m irrational or corrupted?
The vast majority of people who’ve tried heavy drugs or other primitive forms of “wireheading” end up preferring they hadn’t done so. If I predict that you don’t really want to wirehead, I’m probably right.
On the other hand, if you’re willing to do the paperwork to deal with a medical-ethics board, we could of course hook you up with an electrode to your pleasure center for a set period of time, then unhook it and “sober you up” so you’d be non-dependent on it, and then if, after all that, you said to reinstall the electrode so you could wirehead some more (particularly in such a way that other people don’t answer that, indicating a decision of personal values rather than mere addiction), I would of course believe that you rationally desire to wirehead and would of course arrange the medical procedures to grant your request.
But the burden of evidence necessary to beat my “you don’t really want to wirehead” prior is high enough that I want to experiment instead of just believing you at face-value.
I think that when most people talk about wireheading, they mean something like “ideal directly stimulated pleasure”, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as current wireheading. It’s quite possible for current wireheading to be flawed to such a degree that not only is it not the greatest possible pleasure, it isn’t even as much pleasure as people can reasonably get by other means. While I would want the perfect wirehead, current wireheading is less appealing.
The vast majority of people who’ve tried heavy drugs or other primitive forms of “wireheading” end up preferring they hadn’t done so. If I predict that you don’t really want to wirehead, I’m probably right.
On the other hand, if you’re willing to do the paperwork to deal with a medical-ethics board, we could of course hook you up with an electrode to your pleasure center for a set period of time, then unhook it and “sober you up” so you’d be non-dependent on it, and then if, after all that, you said to reinstall the electrode so you could wirehead some more (particularly in such a way that other people don’t answer that, indicating a decision of personal values rather than mere addiction), I would of course believe that you rationally desire to wirehead and would of course arrange the medical procedures to grant your request.
But the burden of evidence necessary to beat my “you don’t really want to wirehead” prior is high enough that I want to experiment instead of just believing you at face-value.
I think that when most people talk about wireheading, they mean something like “ideal directly stimulated pleasure”, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as current wireheading. It’s quite possible for current wireheading to be flawed to such a degree that not only is it not the greatest possible pleasure, it isn’t even as much pleasure as people can reasonably get by other means. While I would want the perfect wirehead, current wireheading is less appealing.