ThrustVectoring comments on Thought experiment: The transhuman pedophile - Less Wrong

6 Post author: PhilGoetz 17 September 2013 10:38PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 September 2013 06:43:23PM 4 points [-]

I may never actually use this in a story, but in another universe I had thought of having a character mention that... call it the forces of magic with normative dimension... had evaluated one pedophile who had known his desires were harmful to innocents and never acted upon them, while living a life of above-average virtue; and another pedophile who had acted on those desires, at harm to others. So the said forces of normatively dimensioned magic transformed the second pedophile's body into that of a little girl, delivered to the first pedophile along with the equivalent of an explanatory placard. Problem solved. And indeed the 'problem' as I had perceived it was, "What if a virtuous person deserving our aid wishes to retain their current sexual desires and not be frustrated thereby?"

(As always, pedophilia is not the same as ephebophilia.)

I also remark that the human equivalent of a utility function, not that we actually have one, often revolves around desires whose frustration produces pain. A vanilla rational agent (Bayes probabilities, expected utility max) would not see any need to change its utility function even if one of its components seemed highly probable though not absolutely certain to be eternally frustrated, since it would suffer no pain thereby.

Comment author: ThrustVectoring 20 September 2013 04:32:10AM 1 point [-]

Problem not solved, in my opinion. The second pedophile is already unable to molest children, and adding severity to punishment isn't as effective as adding immediacy or certainty.

The problem is solved by pairing those who wish to live longer at personal cost to themselves with virtuous pedophiles. The pedophiles get to have consensual intercourse with children capable of giving informed consent, and people willing to get turned into a child and get molested by a pedophile in return for being younger get that.

Comment author: MugaSofer 20 September 2013 07:19:31AM 1 point [-]

I think the point of "normative dimension" was that the Forces Of Magic were working within a framework of poetic justice. "Problem solved" was IC.