If you had a chance to take a pill which would cause you to stop caring about your friends by permanently maxing out that part of your hapiness function regardless of whether you had any friends, would you take it?
I’m not sure this proves anything. I’ll take Jadagul’s description as my own. I’m maximizing my happiness, but my non-sociopath status means that I like having friends/loved ones, so maximizing my own happiness entails caring about them to some degree or another. Under my existing moral code I wouldn’t take the pill, but that’s because it will in the future entail behavior that I would currently, as I am, find obnoxious.
In theory, taking the pill will allow me to be happier by obviating the need to worry about anybody else (along with the resources that entails.) But you can’t get there from here. I already know what the pill will make me later, and the prospect of taking it makes me unhappy now. Taking the pill would be a viable option only if the behavior the pill would induce could somehow be made acceptable to current, non-sociopath me.
If you had a chance to take a pill which would cause you to stop caring about your friends by permanently maxing out that part of your hapiness function regardless of whether you had any friends, would you take it?
I’m not sure this proves anything. I’ll take Jadagul’s description as my own. I’m maximizing my happiness, but my non-sociopath status means that I like having friends/loved ones, so maximizing my own happiness entails caring about them to some degree or another. Under my existing moral code I wouldn’t take the pill, but that’s because it will in the future entail behavior that I would currently, as I am, find obnoxious.
In theory, taking the pill will allow me to be happier by obviating the need to worry about anybody else (along with the resources that entails.) But you can’t get there from here. I already know what the pill will make me later, and the prospect of taking it makes me unhappy now. Taking the pill would be a viable option only if the behavior the pill would induce could somehow be made acceptable to current, non-sociopath me.