Your three examples are all kind of Wireheady. If The Friend has preferences for constant learning “and* against fakeness, that would be a consistent set of preferences that would imply rejection of immortality.
I agree that it’s possible to have such preferences – I don’t think it was clear from the example whether the person does or does not have them. It could still be a lack of imagination.
To put it another way, you may be assuming the Friend is actually a dulness minimiser, who mistakenly thinks that only learning reduces dulness. But maybe learning is their actual terminal value.
I think you could at least argue that it’s not about values but about a lack of imagination. If the problem is really that
this seems to ignore all sorts of ways to solve that problem, such as
finding things to do that remain fun without learning
modifying your memory to allow you to learn things again
modifying your preferences to take pleasure in things other than learning
It’s conceivable that the person would change their view if they thought about it for long enough & immortality were on the table.
Your three examples are all kind of Wireheady. If The Friend has preferences for constant learning “and* against fakeness, that would be a consistent set of preferences that would imply rejection of immortality.
I agree that it’s possible to have such preferences – I don’t think it was clear from the example whether the person does or does not have them. It could still be a lack of imagination.
We need to establish that The Friend is confused before we move on to explanations.
To put it another way, you may be assuming the Friend is actually a dulness minimiser, who mistakenly thinks that only learning reduces dulness. But maybe learning is their actual terminal value.