Caledonian2 comments on The Gift We Give To Tomorrow - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 July 2008 06:07AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (97)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Caledonian2 18 July 2008 03:42:38AM 1 point [-]

it is not woven into the fabric of the universe that intelligent beings (or any beings for that matter) have to have anything that feels as good as love does to us.

Actually, it sort of is. "Feeling good" is just a convenient name to refer to the effect of certain stimuli patterns: a specific level and type of reinforcement.

There may be organisms whose niche does not require them to have a state that represents the level of reinforcement implied by the "experience of love", but that is not a deficiency, and we are not "lucky" to have come from a niche that made being so useful.

But any organism would be theoretically capable of such a reinforcement state even if it had to be artificially imposed upon its neurology. It's not a matter of whether it's possible, but whether it's desirable.

If greater and greater levels of "feeling good" are what you're going for, I suggest you try heroin. Or get yourself wireheaded, ASAP. I think you'll find it's not quite what you were expecting.