Formulated another way: happiness that comes from mistaken beliefs is not only unstable, it also prevents you from attaining greater happiness elsewhere.
The idea of reflective consistency is relevant, here. If you possessed all relevant true beliefs, you would not be happy in that situation.
(And if you disagree, please note that wireheading is very similar to this situation: you’ve taken control of your reward button and are pushing it without much change to your actual situation. If your utility system doesn’t exclude solutions like this, you’re going to have trouble when someone figures out a harmless euphoric...)
it also prevents you from attaining greater happiness elsewhere
Do you imply “always prevents”, “sometimes prevents”, or “could possibly prevent”?
wireheading is very similar to this situation
Hm. So the equivalent statement would be “Happiness produced by wireheading is not valuable”. Two things pop into my head: first, happiness and pleasure are different, wireheading produces the latter but not the former; and second, I still don’t understand what does “is not valuable” mean.
I still don’t understand what does “is not valuable” mean.
Seriously? If I say that a year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life is valuable, it seems to me I’ve said something admirably clear. If I say that the loss of a year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life is not valuable, I think I’ve said something equally clear.
Do these statements seem ambiguous to you? Can you summarize what their competing interpretations are?
I’m not sure I understand how your comment fits into a bigger picture. Let’s say that a person had two options for spending the next year of one’s life:
A year-long vacation, all expenses paid, allowing one to do whatever one wants except for wireheading.
A year-long wireheading session, which will cause one to experience something very close to the maximum possible level of pleasure, for a full year. Due to advanced medical technology, there will be very few, if any, adverse side-effects from this session at the end of the year.
Why would a rational person ever choose (1) but not (2) ?
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.
Right, by “vacation”, I simply meant, “a year free of any obligations other than those you impose on yourself”, and I specified “all expenses paid” to ensure that you won’t need to worry about food, shelter, travel, etc. You can do whatever you want during that year (besides wireheading). If what you really want to do is work at your current job, then you can do that too.
I don’t particularly want to wirehead, so I pick 1. (Assuming I’m in a situation where I can take a vacation in the first place, but this follows from taking the premise and hypothesis in its intended form.)
Value is basically a measure of desire. The statement “is valuable to me” means “I want it”.
When you say “is not valuable” I interpret this as “you don’t really want it”. At this point my instinctual response is to ask “and how do you know what do I want and what do I not want?”.
Take a close cousin of wireheading—masturbation. You perform a short, usually solo activity and you get a jolt of pleasure—very similar to “you’ve taken control of your reward button and are pushing it without much change to your actual situation”. Please estimate the “value”.
Yes, of course, “is valuable” is a two-place predicate… in principle, it’s meaningless without specifying an agent who judges value. “Valuable to whom?” you might ask… “Me? You? Lemurs? Aliens from Alpha Centauri?”
Similarly, “is poisonous” is a two-place predicate. Poisonous to whom? But in practice, I can say “X is poisonous” without any difficulty, and people understand me to mean “X is poisonous to typical humans”.
Similarly, “X is valuable” seems to unambigously mean “X is valuable to a typical human. So when you say you don’t know what it means, I have difficulty taking that claim seriously.
For example, I am pretty confident that a typical human values an additional year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life. I am pretty confident that a typical human doesn’t value losing a year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life. On that basis, I have no problem saying “an additional year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life is valuable,” and I don’t think that statement is vague or ambiguous at all, as I said in the first place.
I don’t know whether we disagree about that, since you didn’t answer my question.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe a typical human doesn’t value an additional year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life. But even if that’s so, it’s still not vague or ambiguous, as you suggested initially. It’s merely wrong.
WRT masturbation, I’m not nearly so confident, but if I had to guess I’d guess that a typical human values it… in other words, that it’s valuable.
Formulated another way: happiness that comes from mistaken beliefs is not only unstable, it also prevents you from attaining greater happiness elsewhere.
The idea of reflective consistency is relevant, here. If you possessed all relevant true beliefs, you would not be happy in that situation.
(And if you disagree, please note that wireheading is very similar to this situation: you’ve taken control of your reward button and are pushing it without much change to your actual situation. If your utility system doesn’t exclude solutions like this, you’re going to have trouble when someone figures out a harmless euphoric...)
Do you imply “always prevents”, “sometimes prevents”, or “could possibly prevent”?
Hm. So the equivalent statement would be “Happiness produced by wireheading is not valuable”. Two things pop into my head: first, happiness and pleasure are different, wireheading produces the latter but not the former; and second, I still don’t understand what does “is not valuable” mean.
Seriously?
If I say that a year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life is valuable, it seems to me I’ve said something admirably clear. If I say that the loss of a year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life is not valuable, I think I’ve said something equally clear.
Do these statements seem ambiguous to you?
Can you summarize what their competing interpretations are?
I’m not sure I understand how your comment fits into a bigger picture. Let’s say that a person had two options for spending the next year of one’s life:
A year-long vacation, all expenses paid, allowing one to do whatever one wants except for wireheading.
A year-long wireheading session, which will cause one to experience something very close to the maximum possible level of pleasure, for a full year. Due to advanced medical technology, there will be very few, if any, adverse side-effects from this session at the end of the year.
Why would a rational person ever choose (1) but not (2) ?
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.
Because said rational person does not regard pleasure as a goal.
Personally, I wouldn’t touch (2) with a bargepole. (I’m not keen on the concept of a “vacation” either, but that’s another matter.)
Right, by “vacation”, I simply meant, “a year free of any obligations other than those you impose on yourself”, and I specified “all expenses paid” to ensure that you won’t need to worry about food, shelter, travel, etc. You can do whatever you want during that year (besides wireheading). If what you really want to do is work at your current job, then you can do that too.
What is your attitude to option (2), though?
See my response to TheOtherDave, above.
I don’t particularly want to wirehead, so I pick 1. (Assuming I’m in a situation where I can take a vacation in the first place, but this follows from taking the premise and hypothesis in its intended form.)
Value is basically a measure of desire. The statement “is valuable to me” means “I want it”.
When you say “is not valuable” I interpret this as “you don’t really want it”. At this point my instinctual response is to ask “and how do you know what do I want and what do I not want?”.
Take a close cousin of wireheading—masturbation. You perform a short, usually solo activity and you get a jolt of pleasure—very similar to “you’ve taken control of your reward button and are pushing it without much change to your actual situation”. Please estimate the “value”.
Yes, of course, “is valuable” is a two-place predicate… in principle, it’s meaningless without specifying an agent who judges value. “Valuable to whom?” you might ask… “Me? You? Lemurs? Aliens from Alpha Centauri?”
Similarly, “is poisonous” is a two-place predicate. Poisonous to whom? But in practice, I can say “X is poisonous” without any difficulty, and people understand me to mean “X is poisonous to typical humans”.
Similarly, “X is valuable” seems to unambigously mean “X is valuable to a typical human. So when you say you don’t know what it means, I have difficulty taking that claim seriously.
For example, I am pretty confident that a typical human values an additional year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life. I am pretty confident that a typical human doesn’t value losing a year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life. On that basis, I have no problem saying “an additional year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life is valuable,” and I don’t think that statement is vague or ambiguous at all, as I said in the first place.
I don’t know whether we disagree about that, since you didn’t answer my question.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe a typical human doesn’t value an additional year of happy, healthy, pleasurable life. But even if that’s so, it’s still not vague or ambiguous, as you suggested initially. It’s merely wrong.
WRT masturbation, I’m not nearly so confident, but if I had to guess I’d guess that a typical human values it… in other words, that it’s valuable.