You are trying to say there is something other than pleasure, yet you concede that all of your examples cause pleasure.

If I was debating the structure of the atom, I could say that "there's more to atoms than their protons", and yet I would 'concede' that all atoms do contain protons. Or I'd say "there's more to protons than just their mass" (they also have an electric charge), but all protons do have mass.

Why are you finding this hard to understand? Why would I need to discover an atom without protons or a proton without mass for me to believe that there's more to atoms than protons (there's also electrons and neutrons) or more to protons than their mass?

That is exactly my point. There is nothing we seek that we don't expect to derive pleasure from.

You had made much stronger statements than that -- you said "You think you want more than pleasure, but what else is there?" You also said "But saying we want more than pleasure? That doesn't make sense. "

Every atom may contain protons, but atoms are more than protons. Every object of our desire may contain pleasure in its fullfillment, but the object of our desire is more than pleasure.

Does this analogy help you understand how your argument is faulty?

Those things you cite are valued because they cause pleasure.

No, they cause pleasure because they're valued.

• You are arguing that we seek things in accordance to and proportionally to the pleasure anticipated in achieving them. (please correct me if I'm getting you wrong)
• I'm arguing that we can want stuff without anticipation of pleasure being necessary. And we can fail to want stuff where there is anticipation of pleasure.

How shall we distinguish between the two scenarios? What's our anticipations for the world if your hypothesis is true vs if mine is true?

Here's a test. I think that if your scenario held, everyone would be willing to rewire their brains to get more pleasure for things they don't currently want; because then there'd be more anticipated pleasure. This doesn't seem to hold -- though we'll only know for sure when the technology actually becomes available.

Here's another test. I think that if my scenario holds, some atheists just before their anticipated deaths would still leave property to their offspring or to charities, instead of spending it all to prostitutes and recreational drugs in attempts to cram as much pleasure as possible before their death.

So I think the tests validate my position. Do you have some different tests in mind?

"If you gave me that option I would not take it, because it would be a lie that I would receive pleasure from the end of mankind."

Consider the package deal to include getting your brain rewired so that you would receive pleasure from the end of mankind. Now do you choose the package deal?

I wouldn't. Can you explain to me why I wouldn't, if you believe the only thing I can want is pleasure?

Stop moving the goalposts.

Giving additional examples, based on the same principle, isn't "moving the goalposts".

Why to argue against me to you have to bring murder or death into the picture?

Because the survival of your children and the community is the foremost example of a common value that's usually placed higher than personal pleasure.

You think you want more than pleasure, but what else is there?

Knowledge, memory, and understanding. Personal and collective achievement. Honour. Other people's pleasure.

I believe if you consider any answer you might give to that question, the reason will be because those things cause pleasure.

As an automated process we receive pleasure when we get what we want, that doesn't mean that we want those things because of the pleasure. At the conscious level we self-evidently don't want them because of the pleasure, or we'd all be willing to sacrifice all of mankind if they promised to wirehead us first.

Of course it would. My question is, to what extent would you mind being alone? Not feeling alone, not even believing you are alone, just being alone.

Of course, once I'm plugged in to my Personal Matrix, I would not mind any more, for I wouldn't feel nor believe I am alone. But right now I do mind. Whatever the real reasons behind it, being cut off from the rest of the world just feels wrong. Basically, I believe I want Multiplayer Fun bad enough to sacrifice some Personal Fun.

Now, I probably wouldn't want to sacrifice much personal fun, so given the choice between maximum Personal Fun and my present life, (no third alternative allowed), I would probably take the blue pill. Though it would really bother me if everyone else wouldn't be given the same choice.

Now to get back on topic, I suspect Luke did want to talk about a primitive system that would turn you into an Orgasmium. Something that would even sacrifice Boredom to maximize subjective pleasure and happiness. (By the way, I suspect that "Eternal Bliss" promised by some beliefs systems is just as primitive.) Such a primitive system would exactly serve his point: do you only want happiness and pleasure? Would you sacrifice everything else to get it?

But saying we want more than pleasure? That doesn't make sense.

Where is the point of your confusion? Why do you assume people only want pleasure? If you give me a choice between living a perfectly pleasurable life for a hundred years, but the whole humankind dies horribly afterwards, and living an average life but the rest of humankind keeps surviving and progressing indefinitely -- I WANT THE SURVIVAL OF MANKIND.

That's because I don't want just pleasure. I want more than pleasure.

We want pleasure, we are just not always sure how to get it.

No, even with perfect and certain knowledge, we would want more than pleasure. What's the hard thing to understand about that?

We are built to want more than a particular internal state of our own minds. Most of us aren't naturally built for solipsism.

If a machine knew what would give us pleasure, and gave us pleasure instead of what we "wanted," then we would always be getting pleasure.

Like e.g. a machine that kills a man's children, but gives him pleasure by falsely telling him they are living happily ever after and erasing any memories to the contrary.

In full knowledge of this, he doesn't want that. I wouldn't want that. Few people would want that. Most of us aren't built for solipsism.

Then you're talking Friendly AI with the prior restriction that you have to live alone. Many¹ people will still run the "I would be subjected to a machine" cached thought, will still disbelieve that a Machine™ could ever understand our so-complex-it's-holly psyche, that even if it does, it will automatically be horrible, and that the whole concept is absurd anyway.

In that case they wouldn't reject the possibility because they don't want to live alone and happy, but because they positively believe FAI is impossible. My solution in that case is just to propose them to live a guaranteed happy life, but alone. For people who still refuse to answer on the grounds of impossibility, invoking the supernatural may help.

1: I derive that "many" from one example alone, but I suspect it extends to most enlightened people who treat philosophy as closer to literature than science (wanting to read the sources, and treating questions like "was Niezche/Kant/Spinoza plain wrong on such point" as ill typed —there's no truths or fallacies, only schools of thought). Michel Onfray appears to say that's typically European.

I feel like I am missing something. You separated pleasure from wanting.

I don't see how this backs up your point though. Unless the machine offered is a desire-fulfilling machine and not a pleasure machine.

If it is a pleasure machine, giving pleasure regardless of the state of wanting, why would we turn it down? You said we usually want more than just pleasure, because getting what we want doesn't always give us pleasure. If wanting and pleasure are different, then of course this makes sense.

But saying we want more than pleasure? That doesn't make sense. You seem to be confusing the two terms your article sets out to separate. We want pleasure, we are just not always sure how to get it. We know we have desires, so why try to fill them, and that doesn't always work. But remember, pleasure and wanting are separate.

If a machine knew what would give us pleasure, and gave us pleasure instead of what we "wanted," then we would always be getting pleasure. Even when we don't get what we want.

Unless your machine doesn't work as advertised, of course.

Hi LW,

I joined this site not too long ago, but I missed this page and its request for an introduction. Better late than never, I guess.

I am 24, a Jr. Software Developer, and I live in Portland, OR. I was raised in a Baptist family, and left the Church during my junior year in high school over their stance on the Oregon Gay marriage bill. Once outside of the daily Sunday indoctrination, it took only a few short weeks to reason my way to atheism. I only wish I could have seen the truth sooner. I spent the next year or so on forums gaining a real variety of philosophical knowledge, and engaging in as many debates as I could. This made me stupid; I learned how to tear apart many arguments, and defend my own, skillfully.

I started reading Less Wrong at work, during down time, and it quickly devoured several weeks. I have always been drawn to science and rationality (though I used to have another name for it) and have found this community to be a fantastic resource. I have learned how to say oops, and to update quickly. I have learned how to see bias in my own thinking. I have started to learn (though still fail to grasp intuitively) Bayesian probability. This community has had a significant impact on me.

PS: How do you pronounce Eliezer?

Edit: Spelling

The practical point is that, if not all knowledge reduces to mathematical patterns of physical objects (the sort of thing that we can organize and learn from textbooks), then the actual project of reductionists becomes futile at a really early stage- we'd have to give up on fully understanding even a worm brain, since we could never have the knowledge of its worm-qualia.

I want to respond to your claim more thoroughly, but my response essentially consists of the second and third posts here. If you want to pick up this conversation on those threads, I'm all for it.

Also, welcome to Less Wrong!

The knowledge Mary has is all physical knowledge, where physical knowledge means the kind of thing that can be found in books. You deam the further, experiential knowledge she gains to be physical because sensory processing is physical, but that is a different sense of physical. If you think she learns something on exiting the room, and it seems you do, then you are conceding part of the claim, the part about the incompleteness of physical explanation, even if you insist that the epistemic problem doesn't lead to an dualistic metaphysics.