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barrkel comments on Not for the Sake of Pleasure Alone - Less Wrong
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Really? So you're ready to give up that easily?
For me, best moments in life are not those when I experience 'intense pleasure'. Life for me is like, you know, in some way, like playing chess match. Or like creating some piece of art. The physical pleasure does not count as something memorable, because it's only a small dot in the picture. The process of drawing the picture, and the process of seeing how your decisions and plans are getting "implemented" in a physical world around me -- that's what counts, that's what makes me love the life and want to live it.
And from this POV, wireheading is simply not an option.
It's not about giving up. And it's also not about "intense pleasure". Video games can be very pleasurable to play, but that's because they challenge us and we overcome the challenges.
What if the machine was reframed as reliving your life, but better tuned, so that bad luck had significantly less effect, and the life you lived rewarded your efforts more directly? I'd probably take that, and enjoy it too. If it was done right, I'd probably be a lot healthier mentally as well.
I think the disgust at "wireheading" relies on some problematic assumptions: (1) that we're not already "wireheading", and (2) that "wireheading" would be a pathetic state somewhat like being strung out on heroin, or in an eternal masturbatory orgasm. But any real "wireheading" machine must directly challenge these things, otherwise it will not actually be a pleasurable experience (i.e. it would violate its own definition).
As Friendly-HI mentions elsewhere, I think "wireheading" is being confusingly conflated with the experience machine, which seems to be a distinct concept. Wireheading as a simple analogue of the push-button-heroin-dose is not desirable, I think everyone would agree. When I mention "wireheading" above, I mean the experience machine; but I was just quoting the word you yourself used.