You can’t imagine anything superior to wireheading? Sad.
The problem is that since we are not perfectly rational agents we have difficulties estimating the consequences of our actions, and our conscious preferences are probably not consistent with a Von Neuman-Morgenstern utility function.
I don’t want to be wireheaded, but I can’t be sure that if I was epistemically smarter or if my conscious preferences were somehow made more consistent, I would still stand by this decision. My intuition is that I would, but my intuition can be wrong, of course.
Wait. How are those two the same thing? You can criticize games for being escapist, but then you have to ask: escape from what, to what? What sort of “real life” (ie: all of real life aside from video games, since games are a strict subset of real life) are you intending to state is strictly superior in all cases to playing video games?
Video games are designed to be stimulate your brain to perform tasks such as spatial/logical problem solving, precise and fast eye-hand coordination, hunting and warfare against other agents, etc. The brain modules that perform these tasks evolved because they increased your chances of survival and reproduction, and the brain reward system also evolved in a way that makes it pleasurable to practice these tasks since even if the practice doesn’t directly increase your evolutionary fitness, it does it so indirectly by training these brain modules. In fact, all mammals play, especially as juveniles, and many also play as adults.
Video games, however, are superstimuli: If you play Call of Duty your eye-hand coordination becomes better, but unless you are a professional hunter or soldier, or something like that, it doesn’t increase your evolutionary fitness, and even if you are, there would be diminishing returns past a certain point, as the game can stimulate your brain modules much more than any “real world” scenario would. Nevertheless, it is pleasurable.
Many people, including myself would argue that we should not try to blindly maximize our evolutionary fitness. Yet, blindly following hedonistic preferences by indulging in superstimuli also seems questionable. Maybe there is a ideal middle ground, or maybe there is no consistent position. The point is, as Vaniver said, that these are difficult and important questions.
Many people, including myself would argue that we should not try to blindly maximize our evolutionary fitness. Yet, blindly following hedonistic preferences by indulging in superstimuli also seems questionable. Maybe there is a ideal middle ground, or maybe there is no consistent position.
It’s not a one-dimensional spectrum with evolutionary fitness on the one end and blind hedonism on the other end in the first place. Your evaluative psychology just doesn’t work that way. As to why you think there exists any such spectrum or trade-off, well, I blame bad philosophy classes and religious preachers: it’s to the clear advantage of moralizing-preacher-types to claim that normal evaluative judgement has no normative substance, and that everyone needs to Work For The Holy Supergoal instead, lest they turn into a drug addict in a ditch (paging high-school health class, as well...).
The problem is that since we are not perfectly rational agents we have difficulties estimating the consequences of our actions, and our conscious preferences are probably not consistent with a Von Neuman-Morgenstern utility function.
I don’t want to be wireheaded, but I can’t be sure that if I was epistemically smarter or if my conscious preferences were somehow made more consistent, I would still stand by this decision. My intuition is that I would, but my intuition can be wrong, of course.
Video games are designed to be stimulate your brain to perform tasks such as spatial/logical problem solving, precise and fast eye-hand coordination, hunting and warfare against other agents, etc.
The brain modules that perform these tasks evolved because they increased your chances of survival and reproduction, and the brain reward system also evolved in a way that makes it pleasurable to practice these tasks since even if the practice doesn’t directly increase your evolutionary fitness, it does it so indirectly by training these brain modules. In fact, all mammals play, especially as juveniles, and many also play as adults.
Video games, however, are superstimuli: If you play Call of Duty your eye-hand coordination becomes better, but unless you are a professional hunter or soldier, or something like that, it doesn’t increase your evolutionary fitness, and even if you are, there would be diminishing returns past a certain point, as the game can stimulate your brain modules much more than any “real world” scenario would.
Nevertheless, it is pleasurable.
Many people, including myself would argue that we should not try to blindly maximize our evolutionary fitness. Yet, blindly following hedonistic preferences by indulging in superstimuli also seems questionable. Maybe there is a ideal middle ground, or maybe there is no consistent position. The point is, as Vaniver said, that these are difficult and important questions.
It’s not a one-dimensional spectrum with evolutionary fitness on the one end and blind hedonism on the other end in the first place. Your evaluative psychology just doesn’t work that way. As to why you think there exists any such spectrum or trade-off, well, I blame bad philosophy classes and religious preachers: it’s to the clear advantage of moralizing-preacher-types to claim that normal evaluative judgement has no normative substance, and that everyone needs to Work For The Holy Supergoal instead, lest they turn into a drug addict in a ditch (paging high-school health class, as well...).