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JoshuaFox comments on A definition of wireheading - Less Wrong
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No it isn't, at least for most humans. When most people give head it is because they desire to make someone else have a pleasurable experience, and when most people receive head it is because they want to have a pleasurable experience. They get exactly what they want, not a counterfeit version of what they want. Ditto for masturbation.
I think you are assuming that giving head is wireheading because you are thinking that people don't desire pleasurable sexual experiences as end in themselves, that sex is in fact some instrumental goal towards some other end, like reproduction. But that simply isn't the case. People like sex and sex-like experiences, full stop. Any evolutionary reasons for why we evolved to like them are morally irrelevant historical details.
This is wireheading, but only in the sense that a paperclipper is wireheading when it makes paperclips.
Humans have been given a value system by evolution and act on it, but given the changing environment, the actions do not optimize for the original implicit goal of evolution.
A paperclipper is given a goal system by its creator and it acts on it, but since the engineer did not think it through properly, its goal system does not match the actual goals of the engineer.
And so, I would not call it wireheading.
Agreed. Paperclipping and oral sex are both not wireheading, because they fulfill the goal systems of the agents doing them perfectly, it is the goal system of the creator of the agent that is being subverted.