So, OK, X is a pedophile. Which is to say, X terminally values having sex with children
No, he terminally values being attracted to children. He could still assign a strongly negative value to actually having sex with children. Good fantasy, bad reality.
Just like I strongly want to maintain my ability to find women other than my wife attractive, even though I assign a strong negative value to following up on those attractions. (one can construct intermediate cases that avoid arguments that not being locked in is instrumentally useful)
So, OK, X is a pedophile. Which is to say, X terminally values having sex with children
No, he terminally values being attracted to children.
That doesn't seem like the usual definition of "pedophile". How does that tie in with "a rational agent should never change it's utility function"?
Incidentally, many people would rather be attracted only to their SO; it's part of the idealised "romantic love" thingy.
There's a recent science fiction story that I can't recall the name of, in which the narrator is traveling somewhere via plane, and the security check includes a brain scan for deviance. The narrator is a pedophile. Everyone who sees the results of the scan is horrified--not that he's a pedophile, but that his particular brain abnormality is easily fixed, so that means he's chosen to remain a pedophile. He's closely monitored, so he'll never be able to act on those desires, but he keeps them anyway, because that's part of who he is.
What would you do in his place?
In the language of good old-fashioned AI, his pedophilia is a goal or a terminal value. "Fixing" him means changing or erasing that value. People here sometimes say that a rational agent should never change its terminal values. (If one goal is unobtainable, the agent will simply not pursue that goal.) Why, then, can we imagine the man being tempted to do so? Would it be a failure of rationality?
If the answer is that one terminal value can rationally set a goal to change another terminal value, then either