What is the difference between an altruistic high and caring about other people? Isn’t the former what the latter feels like?
If there’s no difference we arrive at the general problem of wireheading. I suspect very few people who identify themselves as altruists would choose being wireheaded for altruistic high. What are the parameters that would keep them from doing so?
If there’s no difference we arrive at the general problem of wireheading.
Yes. Let me change my question. If (absent imaginary interventions with electrodes or drugs that don’t currently exist) an altruistic high is, literally, what it feels like when you care about others and act to help them, then saying “I don’t care about them, I just wanted the high” is like saying “I don’t enjoy sex, I just do it for the pleasure”, or “A stubbed toe doesn’t hurt, it just gives me a jolt of pain.” In short, reductionism gone wrong, angst at contemplating the physicality of mind.
It seems to me you can care about having sex without having the pleasure as well as care about not stubbing your toe without the pain. Caring about helping other people without the altruistic high? No problem.
It’s not clear to me where the physicality of mind or reductionism gone wrong enter the picture, not to mention angst. Oversimplification is aesthetics gone wrong.
ETA: I suppose it would be appropriately generous to assume that you meant altruistic high as one of the many mind states that caring feels like, but in many instances caring in the sense that I’m motivated to do something doesn’t seem to feel like anything at all. Perhaps there’s plenty of automation involved and only novel stimuli initiate noticeable perturbations. It would be an easy mistake to only count the instances where caring feels like something, which I think happened in timujin’s case. It would also be a mistake to think you only actually care about something when it doesn’t feel like anything.
It seems to me you can care about having sex without having the pleasure as well as care about not stubbing your toe without the pain. Caring about helping other people without the altruistic high? No problem.
I was addressing timujin’s original comment, where he professed to desiring the altruistic high while being indifferent to other people, which on the face of it is paradoxical. Perhaps, I speculate, noticing that the feeling is a thing distinct from what the feeling is about has led him to interpret this as discovering that he doesn’t care about the latter.
Or, it also occurs to me, perhaps he is experiencing the physical feeling without the connection to action, as when people taking morphine report that they still feel the pain, but it no longer hurts.
If there’s no difference we arrive at the general problem of wireheading. I suspect very few people who identify themselves as altruists would choose being wireheaded for altruistic high. What are the parameters that would keep them from doing so?
Yes. Let me change my question. If (absent imaginary interventions with electrodes or drugs that don’t currently exist) an altruistic high is, literally, what it feels like when you care about others and act to help them, then saying “I don’t care about them, I just wanted the high” is like saying “I don’t enjoy sex, I just do it for the pleasure”, or “A stubbed toe doesn’t hurt, it just gives me a jolt of pain.” In short, reductionism gone wrong, angst at contemplating the physicality of mind.
It seems to me you can care about having sex without having the pleasure as well as care about not stubbing your toe without the pain. Caring about helping other people without the altruistic high? No problem.
It’s not clear to me where the physicality of mind or reductionism gone wrong enter the picture, not to mention angst. Oversimplification is aesthetics gone wrong.
ETA: I suppose it would be appropriately generous to assume that you meant altruistic high as one of the many mind states that caring feels like, but in many instances caring in the sense that I’m motivated to do something doesn’t seem to feel like anything at all. Perhaps there’s plenty of automation involved and only novel stimuli initiate noticeable perturbations. It would be an easy mistake to only count the instances where caring feels like something, which I think happened in timujin’s case. It would also be a mistake to think you only actually care about something when it doesn’t feel like anything.
I was addressing timujin’s original comment, where he professed to desiring the altruistic high while being indifferent to other people, which on the face of it is paradoxical. Perhaps, I speculate, noticing that the feeling is a thing distinct from what the feeling is about has led him to interpret this as discovering that he doesn’t care about the latter.
Or, it also occurs to me, perhaps he is experiencing the physical feeling without the connection to action, as when people taking morphine report that they still feel the pain, but it no longer hurts.
Brains can go wrong in all sorts of ways.