I think you and Vladimir are talking about different things. You probably follow your surface level moral theory as much as any human follows theirs, and unlike most people you seem to be willing to bite the bullets implied, but you don’t follow it the way an AI would follow their utility function. You still notice the bullets you bite, you do things for all sorts of other reasons when you don’t have the opportunity to think it through in terms of total happiness caused, and you probably eliminate all sorts of strategies that might raise total happiness for other reasons before they rise to conscious attention and you can evaluate them properly.
If you want to really get down to it, I am not a utility maximizer. Insomuch as I try to maximize any sort of utility, I try to bring happiness. I may feel bad thinking about things that have a net increase of happiness, but I still try to bring them about.
If imagining a possible future makes me feel bad, this is a fact about me, and not a fact about the possible future. I wish to get rid of the bad feeling. My instinct is to do it by averting that future, but I know better. I just make sure it’s not a future in which I feel bad about it.
I think you and Vladimir are talking about different things. You probably follow your surface level moral theory as much as any human follows theirs, and unlike most people you seem to be willing to bite the bullets implied, but you don’t follow it the way an AI would follow their utility function. You still notice the bullets you bite, you do things for all sorts of other reasons when you don’t have the opportunity to think it through in terms of total happiness caused, and you probably eliminate all sorts of strategies that might raise total happiness for other reasons before they rise to conscious attention and you can evaluate them properly.
If you want to really get down to it, I am not a utility maximizer. Insomuch as I try to maximize any sort of utility, I try to bring happiness. I may feel bad thinking about things that have a net increase of happiness, but I still try to bring them about.
If imagining a possible future makes me feel bad, this is a fact about me, and not a fact about the possible future. I wish to get rid of the bad feeling. My instinct is to do it by averting that future, but I know better. I just make sure it’s not a future in which I feel bad about it.