The vision is of everything desirable happening effortlessly and everything undesirable going away.
Citation needed. Particularly for that first part.
Hack your brain to make eating healthily effortless. Hack your body to make exercise effortless.
You’re thinking pretty small there, if you’re in a position to hack your body that way.
If you’re a software developer, just talk to the computer to give it a general idea of what you want and it will develop the software for you, and even add features you never knew you wanted. But then, what was your role in the process? Who needed you?
Why would I want to even be involved in creating software that somebody else wanted? Let them ask the computer themselves, if they need to ask. Why would I want to be in a world where I had to make or listen to a PowerPoint presentation of all things? Or a summary either?
Why do I care who needs me to do any of that?
Why climb Kilimanjaro if a robot can carry you up?
Because if the robot carries me, I haven’t climbed it. It’s not like the value comes from just being on the top.
Helicopters can fly that high right now, but people still walk to get there.
Why paint, if Midjourney will do it better than you ever will?
Because I like painting?
Does it bother you that almost anything you might want to do, and probably for most people anything at all that they might want to do, can already be done by some other human, beyond any realistic hope of equaling?
Do you feel dead because of that?
Why write poetry or fiction, or music?
For fun. Software, too.
Why even start on reading or listening, if the AI can produce an infinite stream, always different and always the same, perfectly to your taste?
Because I won’t experience any of that infinite stream if I don’t read it?
What would the glorious future actually look like, if you were granted the wish to have all the stuff you don’t want automatically handled, and the stuff you do want also?
The stuff I want includes doing something. Not because somebody else needs it. Not because it can’t be done better. Just because I feel like doing it. That includes putting in effort, and taking on things I might fail at.
Wanting to do things does not, however, imply that you don’t want to choose what you do and avoid things you don’t want to do.
If a person doesn’t have any internal wish to do anything, if they need somebody else’s motivations to substitute for their own… then the deadness is already within that person. It doesn’t matter whether some wish gets fulfilled or not. But I don’t think there are actually many people like that, if any at all.
They’re about having all needs fulfilled, not being bothered by anything, not having burdens, effortlessness on all things. These too are best accomplished by being dead. Yet these are the things that I see people wanting from the wish-fulfilling machine.
I think you’re seeing shadows of your own ideas there.
Hack your brain to make eating healthily effortless. Hack your body to make exercise effortless.
You’re thinking pretty small there, if you’re in a position to hack your body that way.
Yet these are actual ideas someone suggested in a recent comment. In fact, that was what inspired this rant, but it grew beyond what would be appropriate to dump on the individual.
I think you’re seeing shadows of your own ideas there.
Perhaps the voice I wrote that in was unclear, but I no more desire the things I wrote of than you do. Yet that is what I see people wishing for, time and again, right up to wanting actual wireheading.
Scott Alexander wrote a cautionary tale of a device that someone would wear in their ear, that would always tell them the best thing for them to do, and was always right. The first thing it tells them is “don’t listen to me”, but (spoiler) if they do, it doesn’t end well for them.
Because I won’t experience any of that infinite stream if I don’t read it?
There are authors I would like to read, if only they hadn’t written so much! Whole fandoms that I must pass by, activities I would like to be proficient at but will never start on, because the years are short and remain so, however far an active life is prolonged.
Citation needed. Particularly for that first part.
You’re thinking pretty small there, if you’re in a position to hack your body that way.
Why would I want to even be involved in creating software that somebody else wanted? Let them ask the computer themselves, if they need to ask. Why would I want to be in a world where I had to make or listen to a PowerPoint presentation of all things? Or a summary either?
Why do I care who needs me to do any of that?
Because if the robot carries me, I haven’t climbed it. It’s not like the value comes from just being on the top.
Helicopters can fly that high right now, but people still walk to get there.
Because I like painting?
Does it bother you that almost anything you might want to do, and probably for most people anything at all that they might want to do, can already be done by some other human, beyond any realistic hope of equaling?
Do you feel dead because of that?
For fun. Software, too.
Because I won’t experience any of that infinite stream if I don’t read it?
The stuff I want includes doing something. Not because somebody else needs it. Not because it can’t be done better. Just because I feel like doing it. That includes putting in effort, and taking on things I might fail at.
Wanting to do things does not, however, imply that you don’t want to choose what you do and avoid things you don’t want to do.
If a person doesn’t have any internal wish to do anything, if they need somebody else’s motivations to substitute for their own… then the deadness is already within that person. It doesn’t matter whether some wish gets fulfilled or not. But I don’t think there are actually many people like that, if any at all.
I think you’re seeing shadows of your own ideas there.
Yet these are actual ideas someone suggested in a recent comment. In fact, that was what inspired this rant, but it grew beyond what would be appropriate to dump on the individual.
Perhaps the voice I wrote that in was unclear, but I no more desire the things I wrote of than you do. Yet that is what I see people wishing for, time and again, right up to wanting actual wireheading.
Scott Alexander wrote a cautionary tale of a device that someone would wear in their ear, that would always tell them the best thing for them to do, and was always right. The first thing it tells them is “don’t listen to me”, but (spoiler) if they do, it doesn’t end well for them.
There are authors I would like to read, if only they hadn’t written so much! Whole fandoms that I must pass by, activities I would like to be proficient at but will never start on, because the years are short and remain so, however far an active life is prolonged.