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NancyLebovitz comments on Open thread, September 15-21, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I thought wireheading meant stable high pleasure without content rather than an enjoyable simulated world. What do other people think wireheading means?
Well, technically the term "wireheading" comes from experiments which involved inserting an electrode (a "wire") into a rat's pleasure center and giving the rat a pedal to apply electric current to this wire. So yes, in the narrow sense wireheading is just the direct stimulation of the pleasure center.
However I use "wireheading" in the wide sense as well and there it means, essentially, the focus on deriving pleasure from externally caused but internal experiences and the lack of interest in or concern with the outside world. Wireheading in the wide sense is, basically, purified addiction.
If we're living inside an FAI, "outside world" might be getting a little vague. This might even be true if we're still living in our DNA-based bodies.
Do you think an FAI would let people have access to anything it isn't at least monitoring, and more likely controlling?
Uploads/ems are a bit of a different case.
I don't know, but in such a case I probably would not consider it a FAI.
How? Why does it matter in what substrate the information pattern called you resides in this case? I doubt the meat brain will have any connectibility issues once we have uploads.
I am not an information pattern having, for example, a considerable somatic component :-D
Depends. You could have a robotic somatic component, or a human body grown in a vat.
I don't see much difference between a human body grown in a vat and one grown in a womb.
But, generally speaking, in the context of wireheading the somatic component matters.
Does it matter to you because of semantic or moral reasons? I fail to see any moral difference in living in a virtual world as a meat brain vs living in a virtual world as a silicon brain. The semantic difference is obvious.
It matters for practical reasons. Self as an "information pattern" is an abstraction and abstractions do not exist in reality.