EY: I’m not going to touch that one. I’ll stick with the much simpler answer of “I wouldn’t actually prefer to be a passive experiencer.” If I wanted Nirvana, I might try to figure out how to achieve that impossibility. But once you strip away Buddha telling me that Nirvana is the end-all of existence, Nirvana seems rather more like “sounds like good news in the moment of first being told” or “ideological belief in desire” rather than, y’know, something I’d actually want.
Actually, to me Nirvana—or wireheading—sound like the opposite of the “sounds like good news at first” case. Most people, when being told about a scenario where they were turned into orgasmium, would instantly reject it and decide they wouldn’t want it. But if they were made into orgasmium, even for a short while, then they wouldn’t want it to ever stop...
EY: I’m not going to touch that one. I’ll stick with the much simpler answer of “I wouldn’t actually prefer to be a passive experiencer.” If I wanted Nirvana, I might try to figure out how to achieve that impossibility. But once you strip away Buddha telling me that Nirvana is the end-all of existence, Nirvana seems rather more like “sounds like good news in the moment of first being told” or “ideological belief in desire” rather than, y’know, something I’d actually want.
Actually, to me Nirvana—or wireheading—sound like the opposite of the “sounds like good news at first” case. Most people, when being told about a scenario where they were turned into orgasmium, would instantly reject it and decide they wouldn’t want it. But if they were made into orgasmium, even for a short while, then they wouldn’t want it to ever stop...