So, I’m not quite sure what your question has to do with my comment, so I suspect we’re talking past one another as far as “bigger pictures” go.
But to answer your question, one possibility is that the person expects to spend the year earning enough extra cash (or learning the skills that they can later use to get a higher-paying job, or whatever) that, having done so, they can afford to spend two years wireheading. That is, they are trading pleasure now for more pleasure later.
Another possibility is that the person is committed to some project (say, generating QALYs for others by buying malaria nets, or reducing existential global risk by researching FAI theory, or nurturing their children) and they expect that they will be more productive on that project if they aren’t wireheading, and they value the project sufficiently more than their own pleasure that they prefer to make the additional progress on that project rather than experience a maximally pleasurable year.
So, I’m not quite sure what your question has to do with my comment, so I suspect we’re talking past one another as far as “bigger pictures” go.
I was browsing the comments and it looked like the parent thread was about wireheading, but I only skimmed it, so I could be wrong.
...one possibility is that the person expects to spend the year earning enough extra cash … so, they can afford to spend two years wireheading. … Another possibility is that the person is committed to some project … and they value the project sufficiently more than their own pleasure.
Right, in both cases, you’re basically saying, “there’s something else the person could be doing besides wireheading, and that course of action has a higher expected value than a year of wireheading”. That’s a perfectly reasonable answer.
But what if I extended my (imaginary) offer of wireheading to two years, or ten years, or the rest of the person’s natural life ? In this case, your first objection (trading off time now for wireheading later) doesn’t apply, but your second one (trading off your own pleasure for that of others) still does.
But what if we lived in a fictional post-scarcity world where everyone could pick between options (1) and (2) ? Are there still any rational reasons to pick (1) ?
The reason I ask is that most people here, myself included, have a strong aversion to wireheading; but I want to figure out if this aversion is rational, or due to some mental bias.
But what if I extended my (imaginary) offer of wireheading to two years, or ten years, or the rest of the person’s natural life?
If I don’t want wireheading at all, increasing the offered amount of it makes it even worse.
The reason I ask is that most people here, myself included, have a strong aversion to wireheading; but I want to figure out if this aversion is rational, or due to some mental bias.
Well, why do you not want to wirehead? Or for that matter, why do you think it is rational to want to? You haven’t atually said, just posed what looks like a rhetorical question, “why would one not?”, that simply presumes it to be obviously desirable, requiring some special effort to demonstrate otherwise.
I can see how someone might philosophise themselves into that position, along these lines: pleasure is by definition what we want; therefore wireheading in a machine that delivers maximal pleasure must, if available, be the thing we want most. Is that what you have in mind?
I can’t speak for Bugmaster, but for my own part: I value pleasure. If wireheading provides more pleasure than not-wireheading, and doesn’t cost anything I value more than pleasure, I endorse wireheading.
Those are big ’if’s, though. The world in which they are true is not one I can readily imagine, and the easiest means of getting there (e.g., editing me so I don’t value anything more than pleasure) I reject outright.
(shrug) Sure, if I live in a world where nothing I do can meaningfully advance anything which I value more than pleasure (either because I don’t value anything more than pleasure, or because it’s a post-scarcity world where I can’t meaningfully add value along any other axis), and I value pleasure at all, then I ought to wirehead, since it’s the possible act with the highest expected value.
Said more succinctly, if nothing else I do can matter, I might as well wirehead.
Relatedly, if we additionally posit that this fictional post-scarcity world is such that I get the same valuable benefits (happiness, pleasure, etc.) whether I wirehead or not, then I no longer ought to wirehead (though neither is it true that I ought not wirehead). In that world nothing I do or don’t do matters; there is no act X such that I ought to X or ought not X.
Which sounds kind of cool, actually, although I do realize there is social pressure to say otherwise.
So, I’m not quite sure what your question has to do with my comment, so I suspect we’re talking past one another as far as “bigger pictures” go.
But to answer your question, one possibility is that the person expects to spend the year earning enough extra cash (or learning the skills that they can later use to get a higher-paying job, or whatever) that, having done so, they can afford to spend two years wireheading. That is, they are trading pleasure now for more pleasure later.
Another possibility is that the person is committed to some project (say, generating QALYs for others by buying malaria nets, or reducing existential global risk by researching FAI theory, or nurturing their children) and they expect that they will be more productive on that project if they aren’t wireheading, and they value the project sufficiently more than their own pleasure that they prefer to make the additional progress on that project rather than experience a maximally pleasurable year.
There are other possibilities.
I was browsing the comments and it looked like the parent thread was about wireheading, but I only skimmed it, so I could be wrong.
Right, in both cases, you’re basically saying, “there’s something else the person could be doing besides wireheading, and that course of action has a higher expected value than a year of wireheading”. That’s a perfectly reasonable answer.
But what if I extended my (imaginary) offer of wireheading to two years, or ten years, or the rest of the person’s natural life ? In this case, your first objection (trading off time now for wireheading later) doesn’t apply, but your second one (trading off your own pleasure for that of others) still does.
But what if we lived in a fictional post-scarcity world where everyone could pick between options (1) and (2) ? Are there still any rational reasons to pick (1) ?
The reason I ask is that most people here, myself included, have a strong aversion to wireheading; but I want to figure out if this aversion is rational, or due to some mental bias.
If I don’t want wireheading at all, increasing the offered amount of it makes it even worse.
Well, why do you not want to wirehead? Or for that matter, why do you think it is rational to want to? You haven’t atually said, just posed what looks like a rhetorical question, “why would one not?”, that simply presumes it to be obviously desirable, requiring some special effort to demonstrate otherwise.
I can see how someone might philosophise themselves into that position, along these lines: pleasure is by definition what we want; therefore wireheading in a machine that delivers maximal pleasure must, if available, be the thing we want most. Is that what you have in mind?
I can’t speak for Bugmaster, but for my own part: I value pleasure. If wireheading provides more pleasure than not-wireheading, and doesn’t cost anything I value more than pleasure, I endorse wireheading.
Those are big ’if’s, though. The world in which they are true is not one I can readily imagine, and the easiest means of getting there (e.g., editing me so I don’t value anything more than pleasure) I reject outright.
(shrug) Sure, if I live in a world where nothing I do can meaningfully advance anything which I value more than pleasure (either because I don’t value anything more than pleasure, or because it’s a post-scarcity world where I can’t meaningfully add value along any other axis), and I value pleasure at all, then I ought to wirehead, since it’s the possible act with the highest expected value.
Said more succinctly, if nothing else I do can matter, I might as well wirehead.
Relatedly, if we additionally posit that this fictional post-scarcity world is such that I get the same valuable benefits (happiness, pleasure, etc.) whether I wirehead or not, then I no longer ought to wirehead (though neither is it true that I ought not wirehead). In that world nothing I do or don’t do matters; there is no act X such that I ought to X or ought not X.
Which sounds kind of cool, actually, although I do realize there is social pressure to say otherwise.