This post assumes the word “happiness” is crisply defined and means the same thing for everyone but that’s not the case. Or perhaps it is implicitly arguing what the meaning of “happiness” should be?
Anyway this post would be much clearer if the word “happiness” was tabooed.
I have always been slightly confused at people arguing against wire-heading. Isn’t wire-heading the thing that is supposed to max out our utility function? if that’s not the case then what’s the point of talking about it? why not just find what does maximize our utility function and do that instead? Or if we want to say that stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain could only ever account for X% of our utility function then we can just say it, no need for endless arguing. And no, we don’t need to agree we all have the exact same utility function, because we don’t.
Back to “happiness”, I conceive that word as “the feeling I have when I satisfy some condition of my utility function and the score goes up”. So obviously the more the better.
If I happen to value actual scientific discoveries then the pill that only gives me the thrill of making a discovery won’t make me as happy as actually discovering something, because the discovery and the social status and so on won’t be there once the thrill is gone.
We could argue that actually the feeling the pill gives me is indistinguishable from the real feeling, in which case sure enough, I get the same amount of happiness from the pill as from a real discovery, but now the pill has to simulate everything that’s in my light cone using the same mechanisms as the universe would to create an experience indistinguishable from the real deal, so maybe it’s fine?
This post assumes the word “happiness” is crisply defined and means the same thing for everyone but that’s not the case. Or perhaps it is implicitly arguing what the meaning of “happiness” should be?
Anyway this post would be much clearer if the word “happiness” was tabooed.
I have always been slightly confused at people arguing against wire-heading. Isn’t wire-heading the thing that is supposed to max out our utility function? if that’s not the case then what’s the point of talking about it? why not just find what does maximize our utility function and do that instead? Or if we want to say that stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain could only ever account for X% of our utility function then we can just say it, no need for endless arguing. And no, we don’t need to agree we all have the exact same utility function, because we don’t.
Back to “happiness”, I conceive that word as “the feeling I have when I satisfy some condition of my utility function and the score goes up”. So obviously the more the better.
If I happen to value actual scientific discoveries then the pill that only gives me the thrill of making a discovery won’t make me as happy as actually discovering something, because the discovery and the social status and so on won’t be there once the thrill is gone.
We could argue that actually the feeling the pill gives me is indistinguishable from the real feeling, in which case sure enough, I get the same amount of happiness from the pill as from a real discovery, but now the pill has to simulate everything that’s in my light cone using the same mechanisms as the universe would to create an experience indistinguishable from the real deal, so maybe it’s fine?