A point you make that I think deserves more emphasis is the “eye of the beholder” part you use in the title.
Wireheading is something that exists because we have a particular meaning we assign to a reward. This is true whether we are the one observing the actions we might label wireheading or the one to whom it is happening (assuming we can observe our own wireheading).
For example, addicts are often not unaware that they are doing something, like shooting heroin, that will directly make them feel good at the expense of other things, and then they rationally choose to feel good because it’s what they want. From the inside it doesn’t feel like wireheading, it feels like getting what you want. It only looks like wireheading from the outside if we pass judgement on an agent’s choice of values such that we deem the agent’s values to be out of alignment with the objective, a la goodharting. In the case of the heroin addict, they are wireheading from an evolutionary perspective (both the actual evolutionary perspective and the reification of that perspective in people judging a person to be “wasting their life on drugs”).
As I say in another comment here, this leads us to realize there is nothing so special about any particular value we might hold so long as we consider only the value. The value of values, then, must exist in their relation to put the world in a particular state, but even how much we value putting the world in particular states itself comes from values, and so we start to see the self-referential nature of it all that leads to a grounding problem for values. So put another way, wireheading only exists so long as you think you can terminate your values in something true.
Mainly agree, but I’ll point out that addicts at different moment can prefer to not have heroin—in fact, as a addict of much more minor things (eg News), I can testify that I’ve done things I knew I didn’t want to do at every moment of the process (before, during, and after).
A point you make that I think deserves more emphasis is the “eye of the beholder” part you use in the title.
Wireheading is something that exists because we have a particular meaning we assign to a reward. This is true whether we are the one observing the actions we might label wireheading or the one to whom it is happening (assuming we can observe our own wireheading).
For example, addicts are often not unaware that they are doing something, like shooting heroin, that will directly make them feel good at the expense of other things, and then they rationally choose to feel good because it’s what they want. From the inside it doesn’t feel like wireheading, it feels like getting what you want. It only looks like wireheading from the outside if we pass judgement on an agent’s choice of values such that we deem the agent’s values to be out of alignment with the objective, a la goodharting. In the case of the heroin addict, they are wireheading from an evolutionary perspective (both the actual evolutionary perspective and the reification of that perspective in people judging a person to be “wasting their life on drugs”).
As I say in another comment here, this leads us to realize there is nothing so special about any particular value we might hold so long as we consider only the value. The value of values, then, must exist in their relation to put the world in a particular state, but even how much we value putting the world in particular states itself comes from values, and so we start to see the self-referential nature of it all that leads to a grounding problem for values. So put another way, wireheading only exists so long as you think you can terminate your values in something true.
Mainly agree, but I’ll point out that addicts at different moment can prefer to not have heroin—in fact, as a addict of much more minor things (eg News), I can testify that I’ve done things I knew I didn’t want to do at every moment of the process (before, during, and after).