You make a good point about private akrasia conflicts. I'll have to think more about this. It doesn't make sense either way right now.
The reason I object to major preference differences among humans is that this breaks with the psychological unity of humanity. It's not just that there are some minor variations or memetic hijackings in the utility function, but it seems like some are maximizing rewards, while others maximize expected utility. That's a really big difference, so it makes more sense to find an explanation that assumes only one mechanism and explains the respective "unusual" behavior in terms of it.
If we're expected utility maximizers, why are some attracted to wireheading? In terms of reinforcement and things like operant conditioning, raking up "superstitions" and tons of instrumental goals makes sense. Highly splintered and hugely divergent terminal value, however, seems weird to me. Even weird for Azathoth's standards.
About failed utopias, you misunderstood me. I meant Eliezer's scenarios of failed utopias, like this one.
About failed utopias, you misunderstood me.
Fair enough.
it seems like some are maximizing rewards, while others maximize expected utility
Utility is so general a term that it can encompass rewards. It can be said that all people are maximising utility whenever their decisions don't exhibit cyclic preferences or some other blatant (but nevertheless common) error, but this would also be a bit misleading - recalling the von Neumann-Morgenstern theorem usually begs for the cynic interpretation of utility that does care more about what people do rather tha...
I've been thinking about wireheading and the nature of my values. Many people here have defended the importance of external referents or complex desires. My problem is, I can't understand these claims at all.
To clarify, I mean wireheading in the strict "collapsing into orgasmium" sense. A successful implementation would identify all the reward circuitry and directly stimulate it, or do something equivalent. It would essentially be a vastly improved heroin. A good argument for either keeping complex values (e.g. by requiring at least a personal matrix) or external referents (e.g. by showing that a simulation can never suffice) would work for me.
Also, I use "reward" as short-hand for any enjoyable feeling, as "pleasure" tends to be used for a specific one of them, among bliss, excitement and so on, and "it's not about feeling X, but X and Y" is still wireheading after all.
I tried collecting all related arguments I could find. (Roughly sorted from weak to very weak, as I understand them, plus link to example instances. I also searched any literature/other sites I could think of, but didn't find other (not blatantly incoherent) arguments.)
(There have also been technical arguments against specific implementations of wireheading. I'm not concerned with those, as long as they don't show impossibility.)
Overall, none of this sounds remotely plausible to me. Most of it is outright question-begging or relies on intuition pumps that don't even work for me.
It confuses me that others might be convinced by arguments of this sort, so it seems likely that I have a fundamental misunderstanding or there are implicit assumptions I don't see. I fear that I have a large inferential gap here, so please be explicit and assume I'm a Martian. I genuinely feel like Gamma in A Much Better Life.
To me, all this talk about "valueing something" sounds like someone talking about "feeling the presence of the Holy Ghost". I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but the pattern "sense something funny, therefore some very specific and otherwise unsupported claim" matches. How do you know it's not just, you know, indigestion?
What is this "valuing"? How do you know that something is a "value", terminal or not? How do you know what it's about? How would you know if you were mistaken? What about unconscious hypocrisy or confabulation? Where do these "values" come from (i.e. what process creates them)? Overall, it sounds to me like people are confusing their feelings about (predicted) states of the world with caring about states directly.
To me, it seems like it's all about anticipating and achieving rewards (and avoiding punishments, but for the sake of the wireheading argument, it's equivalent). I make predicitions about what actions will trigger rewards (or instrumentally help me pursue those actions) and then engage in them. If my prediction was wrong, I drop the activity and try something else. If I "wanted" something, but getting it didn't trigger a rewarding feeling, I wouldn't take that as evidence that I "value" the activity for its own sake. I'd assume I suck at predicting or was ripped off.
Can someone give a reason why wireheading would be bad?