DanielH comments on Not Taking Over the World - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 December 2008 10:18PM

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Comment author: DanielH 05 October 2013 01:34:18AM *  1 point [-]

Welcome to Less Wrong!

First, let me congratulate you on stopping to rethink when you realize that you've found a seeming contradiction in your own thinking. Most people aren't able to see the contradictions in their beliefs, and when/if they do, they fail to actually do anything about them.

While it is theoretically possible to artificially create pleasure and happiness (which, around here, we call wirehading), converting the entire observable universe to orgasmium (maximum pleasure experiencing substance) seems to go a bit beyond that. In general, I think you'll find most people around here are against both, even though they'd call themselves "utilitarians" or similar. This is because there's more than one form of utilitarianism; many Less Wrongers believe other forms, like preference utilitarianism are correct, instead of the original Millsian hedonistic utilitarianism.

Edit: fixed link formatting