mszegedy comments on How to offend a rationalist (who hasn't thought about it yet): a life lesson - Less Wrong

9 Post author: mszegedy 06 February 2013 07:22AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 07 February 2013 04:11:27AM 2 points [-]

What do you mean by "positive feelings"? For example, would you support wireheading everyone?

Comment author: mszegedy 07 February 2013 04:50:49AM *  0 points [-]

That's exactly what I can't make my mind up about, and forces me to default to nihilism on things like that. Maybe it really is irrelevant where the pleasure comes from? If we did wirehead everyone for eternity, then would it be sad if everyone spontaneously disappeared at some point? Those are questions that I can't answer. My morality is only good for today's society, not tomorrow's. I guess strictly morally, yes, wireheading is a solution, but philosophically, there are arguments to be made against it. (Not from a nihilistic point of view, though, which I am not comfortable with. I guess, philosophically, I can adopt two axioms: "Life requires meaning," and "meaning must be created." And then arises the question, "What is meaning?", at which point I leave it to people with real degrees in philosophy. If you asked me, I'd try to relate it to the entropy of the universe somehow. But I feel that I'm really out of my depth at that point.)

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 09 February 2013 07:03:51PM 4 points [-]

I think you're giving up too early. Have you read the metaethics sequence?