Damn, reading Connor’s letter to Roon had a psychoactive influence on me; I got Ayahuasca flashbacks. There are some terrifying and deep truths lurking there.
Ratios
Karma: 342
It’s not related to the post’s main point, but the U-shape happiness finding seems to be questionable. It looks more like it just goes lower with age by other analyses in general this type of research shouldn’t be trusted
The U-shaped happiness curve is wrong: many people do not get happier as they get older (theconversation.com)
Oh, come on, it’s clear that the Yudkowsky post was downvoted because it was bashing Yudkowsky and not because the arguments were dismissed as “dumb.”
Thank you for your response, Caerulea. Many of the emotions and thoughts you mentioned resonate with me. I truly hope you find peace and a sense of belonging. For myself, I’ve found solace in understanding that my happiness isn’t really determined by external factors, and I’m not to blame or responsible for the way the world is. It’s possible to find happiness in your own bubble, provided you have the necessary resources – which can sometimes be a challenge
Because you have a pretty significant data point (That spans millions of years) on Earth, and nothing else is going on (to the best of our knowledge), now the question is, how much weight do you want to give to this data point? Reserving judgment means almost ignoring it. For me, it seems more reasonable to update towards a net-negative universe.
Maybe, and maybe not.
I agree that looking at reality honestly is probably quite detrimental to happiness or mental health. That’s why many people opt out of these conversations using methods like downvoting, sneering, or denying basic facts about reality. Their aim is likely to avoid the realization that we might be living in a world that is somewhat hellish. I’ve seen this avoidance many times, even in rationalist spaces. Although rationalists are generally better at facing it than others, and some like Brian Tomasik and Nate Soares even address it directly.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these issues – not necessarily a wise choice. I’d humbly advise you to reconsider going down this rabbit hole. I haven’t penned down my conclusions yet, which are a bit idiosyncratic (I don’t strictly identify as a negative utilitarian). But to summarize, if you believe that conscious experience is paramount and that pain and suffering are inherently bad, then our world is probably net negative. This perspective isn’t just about humans; it’s about foundational principles like the laws of physics and evolution.
It doesn’t seem much of a stretch to argue that things are already way beyond the threshold and that it is too late to salvage the situation?
Interestingly, I still harbor hope. Maybe, for consciousness to emerge from nothing, life had to endure the brutal phase of Darwinian Evolution. But the future could be so bright that all the preceding suffering might be viewed as a worthy sacrifice, not a tragedy. Think of the pain a mother experiences during childbirth as a metaphor (but this birth has lasted millions of years). Alternatively, consciousness might vanish, or the world could become truly hellish, even more than its current state. The outcome isn’t clear, but I wouldn’t exclude any of these options.
You don’t need a moral universe; you just need one where the joy is higher than suffering for conscious beings (“agents”); There are many ways in which it can happen:
Starting from a mostly hostile world but converging quickly towards a benevolent reality created by the agents.
Existing in a world where the distribution of bad vs. good external things that the agent can encounter is similar.
Existing in a hostile world, but in which the winning strategy is leeching into a specific resource (which will grant internal satisfaction once reached)
I’m sure you can think of many other examples. Again, it’s not clear to me intuitively that the existence of these worlds is as improbable as you claim.
You’re right about my misunderstanding. Thanks for the clarification.
I don’t think the median moment is the Correct KPI if the distribution has high variance, and I believe this is the case with pain and pleasure experiences. Extreme suffering is so bad that most people will need a lot of “normal” time to compensate for it. I would think that most people will not trade torture to extend their lives in 1:1 and probably not even in 1:10 ratios. (E.g. you get tortured for X time and get your life extended by aX time in return)
see for example:
A Happy Life Afterward Doesn’t Make Up for Torture—The Washington Post
The first part of your reply is basically repeating the point I made, but again, the issue is you’re assuming the current laws of physics are the only laws that allow conscious beings without a creator. I disagree that must be the case.
How can my last point be supported? Do you expect me to create a universe with different laws of physics? How do you know it’s incorrect?
“I’m not convinced by the argument that the experience of being eaten as prey is worse than the experience of eating prey”
Would you see the experience for yourself of being eaten alive Let’s say even having a dog chewing off your hand as equivalent hedonistically to eating a steak? (Long term damage aside)
I don’t think most people would agree to have both of these experiences, but would rather avoid both, which means the suffering is much worse compared to the pleasure of eating meat.
I agree with the proposed methodology, but I have a strong suspicion that the sum will be negative.
If evolution is indifferent, you would expect a symmetry between suffering and joy, but in our world, it seems to lean towards suffering (The suffering of an animal being eaten vs. the joy of the animal eating it. People suffer from chronic pain but not from chronic pleasure, etc.).
I think there are a lot of physics-driven details that make it happen. Due to entropy, most of the things are bad for you, and only a small amount is good, so negative stimuli that signal “beware!” are more frequent than positive stimuli that signal “Come close.”
One can imagine a less hostile universe where you still have dangers, but a larger % of things are good. In our universe, most RNG events are negative, but one can imagine a different universe with different laws of physics that won’t work this way. It doesn’t require a benevolent creator or non-evolutionary process.
How about animals? If they are conscious, do you believe wild animals have net-positive lives? The problem is much more fundamental than humans.
It’s not a utility monster scenario. The king doesn’t receive more happiness than other beings per a unit of resources; he’s a normal human being, just like all the others. While utility sum allows utility monsters, which seems bad, your method of “if some of the people are happy, then it’s just subjective” allows a reverse Omelas, which seems worse. It reminds me a bit of deontologists who criticize utilitarianism while allowing much worse things if applied consistently.
Regarding the second part, I’m not against rules or limits or even against suffering. I just think that a much better game is possible that respects more conscious beings. No more bullshit like kids that are born with cancer and just spend their life dying in misery, or sea turtles that come into existence only to be eaten by predators, and so on and so forth.
Video games are a good example; they have rules and limitations and loss conditions, but they are engineered with the player in mind and for his benefit, while in life, conscious beings are not promised interesting or fair experiences and might be just randomly tortured.
“Evolution is of course, by no means nice, but what’s the point of blaming something for cruelty when it couldn’t possibly be any different?”
That’s the thing; I’m really not convinced about that. I’m sure there could be other universes with different laws of physics where the final result would be much nicer for conscious beings. In this universe, it couldn’t be different, but that’s precisely the thing we are judging here.It may very well be that there are different universes where conscious beings are having a blast and not being tortured and killed as frequently as in this universe that gave rise to this situation. There is no real proof that says existence should be so painful. It could just be the random bad luck of the draw.
It’s hard to argue what reasonable expectations are. My main point was that ‘perhaps’ thinks that in a world that contains torture, wars, factory farming, conscious beings being eaten alive, rape, and diseases, the worst thing that is worth noting is that humans demand so much of it and that the “universe has done a pretty great job.”
I find it incredibly sociopathic (Specifically in the sense of not being moved by the suffering of others).
Imagine a reverse Omelas in which there is one powerful king who is extremely happy and one billion people suffering horrific fates. The King’s happiness depends on their misery. As part of his oppression, he forbids any discussion about the poor quality of life to minimize suicides, as they harm his interests.
“That makes the whole thing subjective, unless you take a very naive total sum utility approach.”
Wouldn’t the same type of argument apply to a reverse Omelas? The sum utility approach isn’t naive; it’s the most sensible approach. Personally, when choosing between alternatives in which you have skin in the game and need to think strategically, that’s exactly the approach you would take.
I would argue that the amount of murders committed by people with the desire for “revenge against the universe” is less than 0.01% of murders and probably much less than murders committed in the name of Christianity during the Crusades. Should we conclude that Christianity is also unhealthy for a lot of people?
This idea of cherry-picking the worst phenomenon related to a worldview and then smearing with it the entire worldview is basically one of the lowest forms of propaganda.
You should check out Efilism or Gnosticism on Negative Utilitarianism. There are views that see the universe as rotten in its core. They are obviously not very popular because they are too hard psychologically for most people and, more importantly, hurt the interest of those who prefer to pretend that life is good and the world is just for their own selfish reasons.
Also, obviously, viewing the world in a positive manner has serious advantages in memetic propagation for reasons that should be left as an exercise for the reader. (Hint: There were probably Buddhist sects that didn’t believe in reincarnation back in the day...)
S-risks are barely discussed in LW, is that because:
People think they are so improbable that it’s not worth mentioning.
People are scared to discuss them.
Avoiding creating hypersititous textual attractors
Other reasons?