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Rain comments on Strategies for dealing with emotional nihilism - Less Wrong
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If the only justification for wanting to survive is that that's what most people want, and that you personally want it, and want to have fun, and be happy, then I don't understand why you can't also let people who do not want those things from doing what they want, even if that's [unthinkable].
What if "pathology" (nihilism, depression) is an alteration of terminal values away from human norms?
Empirically speaking, nihilism and depression usually is a temporary condition; given time, or if conditions change, most people will revert to having more normal human values. So if you want to help someone else maximize utility over time, it's usually reasonable to help prevent them from making decisions in a nihilistic and depressed state which they will find extremely regrettable if and when they are no longer nihilistic and depressed.
I hope you see the correlation between this and wireheading: each involves altering someone's terminal values to achieve greater utility over the allotted time span. The major difference is that one is labeled normal and the other abnormal.
but one can go back to being nihilistic if one chooses to, I think this does not strongly seem to be the case for wire heading.
It seems like less of a choice than one might think. I'm starting to believe terminal values can have natural or provoked drift. Or perhaps they're conflicting and incompatible, gaining and losing strength over time. Or both.