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CronoDAS comments on My main problem with utilitarianism - Less Wrong
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I do. Very much so, in fact.
It's fairly straightforward to max out your subjective happiness with drugs today, why wait?
Is it? What drugs?
Well, that's an interesting question. If you wanted to just feel maximum happiness in a something like your own mind, you could take the strongest dopamine and norepinephrin reuptake inhibitors you could find.
If you didn't care about your current state, you could get creative, opioids to get everything else out of the way, psychostimulants, deliriants. I would need to think about it, I don't think anyone has ever really worked out all the interactions. It would be easy to achieve a extremely high bliss, but some interactions work would be required to figure out something like a theoretical maximum.
The primary thing in the way is the fact that even if you could find a way to prevent physical dependency, the subject would be hopelessly psychologically addicted, unable to function afterwards. You'd need to stably keep them there for the rest of their life expectancy, you couldn't expect them to take any actions or move in and out of it.
Depending on the implementation, I would expect wireheading to be much the same. Low levels of stimulation could potentially be controlled, but using to get maximum pleasure would permanently destroy the person. Our architecture isn't built for it.
Current drugs will only give you a bit of pleasure before wrecking you in some way or another.
CronoDAS should be doing his best to stay alive, his current pain being a down payment on future real wireheading.
Some current drugs, like MDMA, are extremely rewarding at a very low risk.
"Probably the gravest threat to the long-term emotional and physical health of the user is getting caught up in the criminal justice system."
MDMA is known to be neurotoxic. It's definitely not the way to attain maximum happiness in the long run, unless your present life expectancy is very short indeed.
I think that is incorrect. Please substantiate.
From the same page cited by timtyler above:
Yes, the page goes on to describe reasons to be skeptical of the studies, but I think that I don't want to risk it - and I don't know how to get the drugs anyway, especially not in a reasonably pure form. I've also made a point of refusing alcoholic beverages even when under significant social pressure to consume them; my family medical history indicates that I may be at unusually high risk for alcoholism, and I would definitely describe myself as having an "addictive personality", assuming such a thing exists.
Ah, thanks for the relevant response. I was carelessly assuming a stronger definition of neurotoxicity along the lines of the old 80s propaganda ("one dose of MDMA = massive brain damage").
The most recent meta-analysis acknowledges that "the evidence cannot be considered definitive", but concludes:
For practical purposes, this lingering doubt makes little difference. Hedonists are well-advised to abstain from taking Ecstasy on a regular basis even if they assign, say, a 25% chance to the hypothesis that MDMA is neurotoxic.
I myself believe that positive subjective experience ("happiness", in one of its senses) is the only thing that ultimately matters, and would be the first to advocate widespread use of ecstasy in the absence of concerns about its adverse effects on the brain.
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Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, E.; Daumann, Neurotoxicity of methylenedioxyamphetamines (MDMA; ecstasy) in humans: how strong is the evidence for persistent brain damage?, J. Addiction. 101(3):348-361, March 2006.
Yes, I think the sort of "eight pills every weekend" behavour that is sometimes reported is definitely inadvisable. However, there are escalating hazards and diminishing returns; it seems to me that the costs/benefits analysis looks quite the other way for infrequent use. The benefits extend beyond the immediate experience of happiness.
It depends on what you mean by wrecking. Morphine, for example, is pretty safe. You can take it in useful, increasing amounts for a long time. You just can't ever stop using it after a certain point, or your brain will collapse on itself.
This might be a consequence of the bluntness of our chemical instruments, but I don't think so. We now have much more complicated drugs that blunt and control physical withdrawal and dependence, like Subutex and so forth, but the recidivism and addiction numbers are still bad. Directly messing with your reward mechanisms just doesn't leave you a functioning brain afterward, and I doubt wireheading of any sophistication will either.