NB: This is a follow-up to my previous essay The Criminal Stupidity of Intelligent People, as cross-posted to my blog: http://fare.livejournal.com/168562.html. As promised, here is a detailed rational refutation of the utilitarian concept of (Global) "Happiness Maximization" in general, and its specific variant that concludes in favor of wireheading, the...
What always fascinates me when I meet a group of very intelligent people is the very elaborate bullshit that they believe in. The naive theory of intelligence I first posited when I was a kid was that intelligence is a tool to avoid false beliefs and find the truth. Surrounded...
The STV supposes that pleasantness is valuable independently from the agent's embedding in reality—thus is a Pixie Dust Theory of Happiness, that I indeed argue against in my essay (see section "A Pixie Dust Theory of Happiness").
While the examples and repetition used in the paragraph cited are supposed to elicit a strong emotion, the underlying point holds: If you're trying to find the most emotional happiness intensive moment to reproduce, a violent joyful emotion from an insane criminal mastermind is more likely to be it than a peaceful zen moment by a mellow sage. The extreme negative cost to the victims, however great, is in this hypothesis only accounted once; it is... (read more)
After my massive negative score from the post above was reduced by time, I could eventually post the sequel on this site: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/w4MenDETroAm3f9Wj/a-refutation-of-global-happiness-maximization
NB: This is a follow-up to my previous essay The Criminal Stupidity of Intelligent People, as cross-posted to my blog: http://fare.livejournal.com/168562.html.
As promised, here is a detailed rational refutation of the utilitarian concept of (Global) "Happiness Maximization" in general, and its specific variant that concludes in favor of wireheading, the cultivation of individuals in vats in a permanent state of artificially stimulated bliss.
To recall the background, I recently had a discussion with a very intelligent and extremely well-meaning colleague of mine, Jeff Kaufman, who, as an aside during an evening he organized to foster efficient philanthropy, was seriously defending the utilitarian ideal of "Happiness Maximization" to its wantonly absurd consequence, wireheading: putting humans, by force if needs be, into vats, where the pleasure centers of their brains will be... (read 4322 more words →)
You don't get it. Murder is NOT an abstract variable in the previous comment. It's a constant.
No, no, no. The point is: for any fixed set of questions, higher IQ will be positively correlated with believing in better answers. Yet people with higher IQ will develop beliefs about new, bigger and grander questions; and all in all, on their biggest and grandest questions, they fail just as much as lower-IQ people on theirs. Just with more impact. Including more criminal impact when these theories, as they are wont to do, imply the shepherding (and often barbecuing) the mass of their intellectual inferiors.
Once again, "ideology" is but an insult for theories you don't like. All in all your post is but gloating at being more subtle than other people. Speak of an "analytical" state of mind.
But granted - you ARE more subtle than most. And yet, you still maintain blissful ignorance of some basic laws of human action.
PS: the last paragraph of your previous comment suggests that if you're into computer science, you might be interested Gerald J. Sussman's talk about "degeneracy".
Even in engineering and business schools, socialism is stronger than it ought to be and plays a strong role of censorship, "affirmative" action, selection of who's allowed to rise, etc. But it has less impact there, because (1) confrontation to reality and reason weakens it, (2) engineering is about control over nature, not over men, therefore politics isn't directly relevant, (3) power-mongers want to maximize their impact as such, therefore flock to other schools.
I assume no such causation. I do assume a correlation, which is brought about by evolution: cooperation beats conflict.
I don't understand your "simpler rejection" as stated.
Accusing me of presenting my principle as "Perfect" - what a great combination of 1- straw man argument -- putting a nirvana fallacy in my mouth 2- special pleading -- the double standard of requiring my principles to be "perfect" but not yours.
Your belief that force can ever have large-scale positive consequences denotes a singular blindness to the Law of Eristic Escalation, and/or the Law of Bitur-Camember http://fare.livejournal.com/32611.html It's OK to be ignorant - but lame to laugh at those who aren't because they aren't.
Yes, the Universal Law applies to any kind of sentient being. See for instance my essay "Identity, Immunity, Law and Aggression on the Rapacious Hardscrapple Frontier" http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/hardscrapple.html
And no, I never argued that "if it appeals to intelligent people, it's wrong". Your implied argument is a straw man. If you read carefully, I give a very specific criterion on how one may lift the burden of the proof against tradition.
Who of the proponents of a theory and its opponents are bullet-swallowers? Each thinks it's the other. Using that as an argument is begging the question.
What always fascinates me when I meet a group of very intelligent people is the very elaborate bullshit that they believe in. The naive theory of intelligence I first posited when I was a kid was that intelligence is a tool to avoid false beliefs and find the truth. Surrounded by mediocre minds who held obviously absurd beliefs not only without the ability to coherently argue why they held these beliefs, but without the ability of even understanding basic arguments about them, I believed as a child that the vast amount of superstition and false beliefs in the world was due to people both being stupid and following the authority of insufficiently... (read 2047 more words →)
If wireheading were a serious policy proposal being actively pursued with non-negligible chances of success, I would be shooting to kill wireheaders, not arguing with them.
I am arguing precisely because Jeff and other people musing about wireheading are not actual criminals—but might inspire a future criminal AI if their argument is accepted.
Arguing about a thought experiment means taking it seriously, which I do. And if the conclusion is criminal, this is an important point that needs to be stated. When George Bernard Shaw calmly claims the political necessity of large scale extermination of people unfit for his socialist paradise, and doing it scientifically, he is not being a criminal—but it is extremely... (read more)