You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Nisan comments on Multiverse-Wide Preference Utilitarianism - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: Brian_Tomasik 30 January 2014 06:08PM

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

Comments (22)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Nisan 31 January 2014 05:08:05PM 1 point [-]

An agent's revealed preferences are distinct from the agent's feelings of desire. The Beethoven monster can be seen to risk its own life to hear Beethoven, but that doesn't mean it has a strong feeling of desire. The data could just as well be explained by a lack of strong desire to keep living. Or the agent could lack any emotions we would call "desire" or "desperation". In the latter two cases, the argument doesn't seem clear to me.