almost none of the scenarios involve simulations that just satisfy biological urges
The issue isn't whether you would mess with your reward circuitry, the issue is whether you would just discard it altogether and just directly stimulate the reward center.
And appealing to fictional evidence isn't a particularly good argument.
Anyone trying to modify a habit is trying to modify what behaviors lead to rewards.
See above -- modify, yes, jettison the whole system, no.
Well, fine. Since the context of the discussion was how optimizers pose existential threats, it's still not clear why an optimizer that is willing and able to modify it's reward system would continue to optimize paperclips. If it's intelligent enough to recognize the futility of wireheading, why isn't it intelligent enough to recognize behavior that is inefficient wireheading?
Part 1 was previously posted and it seemed that people likd it, so I figured that I should post part 2 - http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html