S-risks: Why they are the worst existential risks, and how to prevent them

Kaj_Sotala

Yeah. One sign of asymmetry is that creating two universes, one filled with pleasure and the other filled with pain, feels strongly negative rather than symmetric to us. Another sign is that pain is an internal experience, while our values might refer to the external world (though it's very murky), so the former might be much easier to achieve. Another sign is that in our world it's much easier to create a life filled with pain than a life that fulfills human values.

"one filled with pleasure and the other filled with pain, feels strongly negative rather than symmetric to us"

Comparing pains and pleasures of similar magnitude? People have a tendency not to do this, see the linked thread.

"Another sign is that pain is an internal experience, while our values might refer to the external world (though it's very murky"

You accept pain and risk of pain all the time to pursue various pleasures, desires and goals. Mice will cross electrified surfaces for tastier treats.

If you're going to care about hedonic st... (read more)

3dogiv9y

Yes, many people intuitively feel that a universe of pleasure and a universe of pain add to a net negative. But I suspect that's just a result of experiencing (and avoiding) lots of sources of extreme pain in our lives, while sources of pleasure tend to be diffuse and relatively rare. The human experience of pleasure is conjunctive because in order to survive and reproduce you must fairly reliably avoid all types of extreme pain. But in a pleasure-maximizing environment, removing pain will be a given. It's also true that our brains tend to adapt to pleasure over time, but that seems simple to modify once physiological constraints are removed.

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S-risks: Why they are the worst existential risks, and how to prevent them

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S-risks: Why they are the worst existential risks, and how to prevent them

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