From: Lawrence Foard (entropy@farviolet.com)
Date: Fri Jan 02 2004 - 21:49:16 MST
On Fri, 2 Jan 2004, Wei Dai wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 02:37:44PM -0800, Lawrence Foard wrote:
> > Of course that tells you that heroin is good and work is bad. [...]
>
> How did you reach that conclusion?
Taking the most simplistic view of "desires==good, aversions==bad", the
problem with doing heroin instead of working, is that the long term
outcome results in something most people are averse to.
> As far as I can tell, a lot more people
> work than use heroin. Even if we let people choose between heroin for free
> and work for no pay, many people will choose work (depending on how
> interesting it is to them), but even the ones that choose heroin will feel
> conflicted about it.
Yes, but they know it will lead eventually to something they are very
averse to. But what if it didn't? What if big daddy AI shot you up with
the best drugs that existed, kept you alive (until the universe ran out of
fuel), and no tolerance of any sort ever developed. The best sensations
the human brain could experience yours for 100 billion years.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing. I know I'd have a hell of a hard time
saying no to that, eventhough in many respects it is simply a form of
death. In the singularity everything breaks down morality wise. So many
possibilities open up, so many different perspectives to view the new
world from, that good and bad will be very hard to define (or rather the
difficulties in there definitions will become more apparent). Minor
thoughts in the mind of a massive AI might vastly exceed the complexity
and experience of our entire lives, and be born and wiped out at a whim,
or even exceeding the complexity of the entire human race as it now
stands.
Yet from another perspective these are just electrons, photons, or other
particles being moved around in certain patterns, rather than other
patterns. Who is to say which pattern of energy usage is good? Of course
the patterns might say so, but how would we even know how to listen to
them?
-- Laughter-Confusion, Pleasure-Pain, Happyness-Sadness, Excitement-Fear, Love-Hate, etc. The true primary emotions, a modifier makes each into two. This modifier is acceptance/unacceptance. Let go, surrender, accept... Be a counter terrorist perpetrate random senseless acts of kindness
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