In this case: letting bias and/or intellectual laziness dominate your decision-making process.
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't decide that. I'm not arguing any kind of "should."
I'm just saying, if you do decide that, you're kind of dumb. And by analogy Eliezer was being kind of dumb in his article.
Interesting stuff. Very interesting.
Do you buy it?
That article is arguing that it's all right to value things that aren't mental states over a net gain in mental utility.[1] If, for instance, you're given the choice between feeling like you've made lots of scientific discoveries and actually making just a few scientific discoveries, it's reasonable to prefer the latter.[2]
Well, that example doesn't sound all that ridiculous.
But the logic that Eliezer is using is exactly the same logic that drives somebody who's dying of a horrible disease to refuse antibi...
But the logic that Eliezer is using is exactly the same logic that drives somebody who's dying of a horrible disease to refuse antibiotics, because she wants to keep her body natural. And this choice is — well, it isn't wrong, choices can't be "wrong" — but it reflects a very fundamental sort of human bias. It's misguided.
Very well, let's back up Eliezer's argument with some hard evidence. Fortunately, lukeprog has already written a brief review of the neuroscience on this topic. The verdict? Eliezer is right. People value things other tha...
This may be a minor nit, but... is this forum collectively anti-orgasmium, now?
Because being orgasmium is by definition more pleasant than not being orgasmium. Refusing to become orgasmium is a hedonistic utilitarian mistake, full stop.[1] (Well, that's not actually true, since as a human you can make other people happier, and as orgasmium you presumably cannot. But it is at least on average a mistake to refuse to become orgasmium; I would argue that it is virtually always a mistake.)
[1] We're all hedonistic utilitarians, right?
We're all hedonistic utilitarians, right?
No. Most of us are preferentists or similar. Some of us are not consequentialists at all.
[1] We're all hedonistic utilitarians, right?
... no?
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb/not_for_the_sake_of_happiness_alone/
I don't think his explanation for why a chair pushes back on your hand is quite right, either. I've mostly been told that material solidness comes from the Pauli exclusion principle, not electrostatic repulsion.
I don't know quantum mechanics, so I don't have a good perspective on the problem, but the electrostatic explanation has always seemed lacking to me. The electric charge in a neutral atom is fairly well-approximated by a symmetric sphere of negative charge with a bunch of positive charge at the center, so two atoms shouldn't experience much electros...
Both the Pauli exclusion principle and electrostatic repulsion contribute. There is a brief discussion of this on Wikipedia, which cites the work of Freeman Dyson.
...A more rigorous proof was provided in 1967 by Freeman Dyson and Andrew Lenard, who considered the balance of attractive (electron-nuclear) and repulsive (electron-electron and nuclear-nuclear) forces and showed that ordinary matter would collapse and occupy a much smaller volume without the Pauli principle.[6] The consequence of the Pauli principle here is that electrons of the same spin are ke
I have never used the word "mistake" by itself. I did say that refusing to become orgasmium is a hedonistic utilitarian mistake, which is mathematically true, unless you disagree with me on the definition of "hedonistic utilitarian mistake" (= an action which demonstrably results in less hedonic utility than some other action) or of "orgasmium" (= a ... (read more)