I was surprised that this post ever seemed surprising, which either means it wasn’t revolutionary, or was *very* revolutionary. Since it has 229 karma, seems like it was the latter. I feel like the same post today would have been written with more explicit references to reinforcement learning, reward, addiction, and dopamine. The overall thesis seems to be that you can get a felt sense for these things, which would be surprising—isn’t it the same kind of reward-seeking all the way down, including on things that are genuinely valuable? Not sure how to model this.
Is anything genuinely valuable though? I.e. independent of the fact that it generates rewards (feelings of happiness, life satisfaction, eudaemonia). A philosophical stance I know, but a widely held one.
I was surprised that this post ever seemed surprising, which either means it wasn’t revolutionary, or was *very* revolutionary. Since it has 229 karma, seems like it was the latter. I feel like the same post today would have been written with more explicit references to reinforcement learning, reward, addiction, and dopamine. The overall thesis seems to be that you can get a felt sense for these things, which would be surprising—isn’t it the same kind of reward-seeking all the way down, including on things that are genuinely valuable? Not sure how to model this.
Is anything genuinely valuable though? I.e. independent of the fact that it generates rewards (feelings of happiness, life satisfaction, eudaemonia). A philosophical stance I know, but a widely held one.