But how far can you go down that road before you’re not human any more? (in a bad way)
Coffee isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing with some side effects people don’t like.
Self modifying to no longer like a good thing may be good, but it seems unstable.
what if we happened to live in a world where everything that tasted good was bad for us, would we be better off eradicating taste? What if the things we don’t yet know about the universe have similar features?
Yes good point. This reminds me of a question once brought up at the meetup:
“If you could modify yourself so that you really liked working hard to improve the world, over your current life enjoyments, would you?”
The idea being—would you modify yourself so you valued, say, working for charities, rather than playing computer games and listening to music (or whatever it is you do now instead of working at the local soup kitchen every weekend)?
If you did it—you know that you would actually be made happy by doing the kinds of things you currently think you “should do more of but don’t get around to very often”.
My gut reaction is to flinch away from doing this… I’d be interested in exploring why that is… but have no idea really where to start.
Well, a somewhat obvious answer is that you might fear that valuing doing the things you think you should do more of will leave you worse off by your current standards.
Hmm, not sure of that’s it. According to my current set of “wouldn’t it be awesome if” standards, I’d actually be much better off. I do get a feeling that I’d be less “real” though → programmed to be a task-loving machine instead of a person with real, human desires.
However I certainly see the potential for “ick” scenarios where I would consider myself to be worse off (in a “poor sad person” kind of way) - eg programming myself to love housework—and ending up loving it so much that I turn myself into a slave/maid for other people who take advantage of it… poor example perhaps, but hopefully you get the drift.
But how far can you go down that road before you’re not human any more? (in a bad way) Coffee isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing with some side effects people don’t like. Self modifying to no longer like a good thing may be good, but it seems unstable.
what if we happened to live in a world where everything that tasted good was bad for us, would we be better off eradicating taste? What if the things we don’t yet know about the universe have similar features?
Yes good point. This reminds me of a question once brought up at the meetup:
“If you could modify yourself so that you really liked working hard to improve the world, over your current life enjoyments, would you?”
The idea being—would you modify yourself so you valued, say, working for charities, rather than playing computer games and listening to music (or whatever it is you do now instead of working at the local soup kitchen every weekend)?
If you did it—you know that you would actually be made happy by doing the kinds of things you currently think you “should do more of but don’t get around to very often”.
My gut reaction is to flinch away from doing this… I’d be interested in exploring why that is… but have no idea really where to start.
Well, a somewhat obvious answer is that you might fear that valuing doing the things you think you should do more of will leave you worse off by your current standards.
Hmm, not sure of that’s it. According to my current set of “wouldn’t it be awesome if” standards, I’d actually be much better off. I do get a feeling that I’d be less “real” though → programmed to be a task-loving machine instead of a person with real, human desires.
However I certainly see the potential for “ick” scenarios where I would consider myself to be worse off (in a “poor sad person” kind of way) - eg programming myself to love housework—and ending up loving it so much that I turn myself into a slave/maid for other people who take advantage of it… poor example perhaps, but hopefully you get the drift.