Am I the only one (one of the only ones) who likes the hedonium shockwave?
Western culture loves identity and personal narratives, likely more than any species or culture in the history of the known universe, and I find it interesting how much this preference hasn’t escaped the scrutiny of Lesswrong-ish folks.
I would imagine an inside view of blissful personhood transcendence would be of utmost epistemic value here. Dissolution of personal narrative is not only something that could be tolerated, but seems to be the explicit highest good of many cultures. Nature-worshipping indigenous peoples, Buddhists, contemporary psychonauts.
My inside views here, and many years of deeply studying alternatives to western humanistic egocentrism have led me to believe there is something valuable here.
So yes I like it. I also like a universe of embodied humans who have transcended just the western-conditioned suffering-inducing aspects of their personal identities, but live mostly in a state of interconnection that LinkedIn profiles, accumulations of objects riddled with a felt sense of ownership and “mine”, and instagram-likes-optimizing lifestyles just aren’t getting us.
I still like the piece though, the human aspect and sadness are real, I only believe they’re part of a greater context.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by “greater context”? By my reading, the story didn’t really hint at what the actual result of this “shockwave” is. The interpretation of happiness being carried out could be incredibly unfulfilling or lacking coherence.
If the “happiness” being implemented is functionally equivalent to oblivion then we don’t even need to wait around for a “hedonium shockwave”. We could just promote antinatalism.
Which is to say, I’m guessing you have some specific sort of “good” outcome in mind. What’s your vision for the other side of this scenario?
That’s true, this story did not specify what the hedonium shockwave was. I was referencing my conception based off conversations with people in this community I’ve had outside the context of this story, as well as the pattern of “greatest utilitarian maximization of positive valence for the universe”. I would imagine, for instance, if a superpowerful AI decided to create a hedonium shockwave because they are maximizing positive valence, they would not create something unfulfilling. That seems like a pretty low-level error (and one humans do seem to make a lot)! It is interesting how your definition of happiness could be compatible with unfulfilling. This is semantics, but my semantics intuitively would say, if it’s not fulfilling it’s not happiness. I think the term positive valence is this best way around semantics.
I think that perhaps preference-satisfaction-onium which the girl is imagining, and which I think is closer to what most people may actually want, may rapidly converge on hedonium, as the hedonic treadmill of preference after preference being rapidly fulfilled may lead to a ramping up of higher and higher levels of pleasure/wellbeing, without the person ever ceasing to have desire for yet even better experience, until some limit of utilitronium or hedonium is reached.
That’s my take too like, exactly! People may say “I want candy” or “I want a boyfriend” but that’s not really what they want. I’m going to be the most annoying person and leave this comment there, I think the rest is worth sitting with rather than me typing out.
Am I the only one (one of the only ones) who likes the hedonium shockwave?
Western culture loves identity and personal narratives, likely more than any species or culture in the history of the known universe, and I find it interesting how much this preference hasn’t escaped the scrutiny of Lesswrong-ish folks.
I would imagine an inside view of blissful personhood transcendence would be of utmost epistemic value here. Dissolution of personal narrative is not only something that could be tolerated, but seems to be the explicit highest good of many cultures. Nature-worshipping indigenous peoples, Buddhists, contemporary psychonauts.
My inside views here, and many years of deeply studying alternatives to western humanistic egocentrism have led me to believe there is something valuable here.
So yes I like it. I also like a universe of embodied humans who have transcended just the western-conditioned suffering-inducing aspects of their personal identities, but live mostly in a state of interconnection that LinkedIn profiles, accumulations of objects riddled with a felt sense of ownership and “mine”, and instagram-likes-optimizing lifestyles just aren’t getting us.
I still like the piece though, the human aspect and sadness are real, I only believe they’re part of a greater context.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by “greater context”? By my reading, the story didn’t really hint at what the actual result of this “shockwave” is. The interpretation of happiness being carried out could be incredibly unfulfilling or lacking coherence.
If the “happiness” being implemented is functionally equivalent to oblivion then we don’t even need to wait around for a “hedonium shockwave”. We could just promote antinatalism.
Which is to say, I’m guessing you have some specific sort of “good” outcome in mind. What’s your vision for the other side of this scenario?
That’s true, this story did not specify what the hedonium shockwave was. I was referencing my conception based off conversations with people in this community I’ve had outside the context of this story, as well as the pattern of “greatest utilitarian maximization of positive valence for the universe”. I would imagine, for instance, if a superpowerful AI decided to create a hedonium shockwave because they are maximizing positive valence, they would not create something unfulfilling. That seems like a pretty low-level error (and one humans do seem to make a lot)! It is interesting how your definition of happiness could be compatible with unfulfilling. This is semantics, but my semantics intuitively would say, if it’s not fulfilling it’s not happiness. I think the term positive valence is this best way around semantics.
I too like the hedonium shockwave, for the same reasons as you.
Some may argue I have just read too much Buddhism, but I think wellbeing and freedom from suffering is worth the loss of personal identity.
I argue they haven’t read enough Buddhism 😆. I know my opinion isn’t super popular here. I am willing to take the downvotes.
I have an interesting take here:
I think that perhaps preference-satisfaction-onium which the girl is imagining, and which I think is closer to what most people may actually want, may rapidly converge on hedonium, as the hedonic treadmill of preference after preference being rapidly fulfilled may lead to a ramping up of higher and higher levels of pleasure/wellbeing, without the person ever ceasing to have desire for yet even better experience, until some limit of utilitronium or hedonium is reached.
That’s my take too like, exactly! People may say “I want candy” or “I want a boyfriend” but that’s not really what they want. I’m going to be the most annoying person and leave this comment there, I think the rest is worth sitting with rather than me typing out.