I believe so, but I’m not totally sure how to formulate and communicate the reasons for my disagreement. I’m pretty sure though that the proper way to characterize the alternatives here is not “setting things up so that people are happy” vs “making them do the ideologically correct thing”.
If you want to engage on this, I suppose I would start with a question: is there something special about sexual fantasies that makes them deserving of being indulged—something that would not apply to other fantasies that people would prefer not to see carried out in fact? For example, if I enjoy fantasizing about brutalizing and terrorizing people while wearing a white robe and hood, is that something I should indulge as fantasies, so long as I don’t act on them? Does it matter whether these fantasies are classified as sexual fantasies?
Sex fantasies are usually indulged when people are engaged in sex activity and not otherwise. Your example would be less disturbing, at least to me, if you qualified it with something similar—someone who enjoys fantasizing about brutalizing people while playing video games sounds less dangerous than someone who enjoys fantasizing about brutalizing people full stop.
Would it be less disturbing still if I told you that I don’t fantasize about brutalizing people—full stop? Would people here be congratulating me and asking how I did it if I said I used to have such fantasies, but had managed to hack my utility function so that I no longer find such fantasies attractive? If I did that hacking, would I not only seem less dangerous—would I not also be less dangerous?
I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland here.
Alice: What is that horrible ALL CAPS noise in this well-tended garden? If I downvote it, will there be less of it?
Humpty Dumpty: Oh, I hope you are not going to downvote that! It is the mating call of Homo lesswrongis. Think of it as the sound of people striving to become happy.
Alice: But the question is: Can you make a garden mean so many different things to so many different people?
Humpty Dumpty: The question is: who is to be the master? NEXT!
Okay, but you did the consequentialist reasoning first, right?
I believe so, but I’m not totally sure how to formulate and communicate the reasons for my disagreement. I’m pretty sure though that the proper way to characterize the alternatives here is not “setting things up so that people are happy” vs “making them do the ideologically correct thing”.
If you want to engage on this, I suppose I would start with a question: is there something special about sexual fantasies that makes them deserving of being indulged—something that would not apply to other fantasies that people would prefer not to see carried out in fact? For example, if I enjoy fantasizing about brutalizing and terrorizing people while wearing a white robe and hood, is that something I should indulge as fantasies, so long as I don’t act on them? Does it matter whether these fantasies are classified as sexual fantasies?
Sex fantasies are usually indulged when people are engaged in sex activity and not otherwise. Your example would be less disturbing, at least to me, if you qualified it with something similar—someone who enjoys fantasizing about brutalizing people while playing video games sounds less dangerous than someone who enjoys fantasizing about brutalizing people full stop.
Would it be less disturbing still if I told you that I don’t fantasize about brutalizing people—full stop? Would people here be congratulating me and asking how I did it if I said I used to have such fantasies, but had managed to hack my utility function so that I no longer find such fantasies attractive? If I did that hacking, would I not only seem less dangerous—would I not also be less dangerous?
I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland here.
Alice: What is that horrible ALL CAPS noise in this well-tended garden? If I downvote it, will there be less of it?
Humpty Dumpty: Oh, I hope you are not going to downvote that! It is the mating call of Homo lesswrongis. Think of it as the sound of people striving to become happy.
Alice: But the question is: Can you make a garden mean so many different things to so many different people?
Humpty Dumpty: The question is: who is to be the master? NEXT!
This is a weird way to follow up on: