Warrigal comments on Pain - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Alicorn 02 August 2009 07:12PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 03 August 2009 03:32:38PM 1 point [-]

Consider someone whose only ambition is to collect every Pokemon in the world. Kpreid's scenario suggests a dichotomy: either it is okay to cause this person pain, or the only reason not to cause this person pain is because it might prevent Pokemons from being collected.

I would agree with this statement. This person's ambition does not involve not having pain; they would gladly be tortured for six years if that were the most efficient way of getting one more Pokemon.

Comment author: prase 03 August 2009 04:52:15PM 0 points [-]

Does "not having pain" count as an ambition? If so, then probably anything we like or dislike can be described as ambition or goal, and "pain interferes with our goals" reduces to liitle more than "we don't like pain".

Comment author: [deleted] 04 August 2009 02:42:18AM 0 points [-]

Well, "ambition" isn't much of a word for it, seeing as how it isn't very ambitious. But yes, I think that we can generally describe our likes and dislikes as goals, in which case not liking pain very much makes pain interfere with our goals.

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