I’m fine with a galaxy without humor, music, or art. I’d sacrifice all of that reproductive fitness signalling (or whatever it is) to maximize my persistence odds as a subjective conscious entity, if that “dilemma” was presented to me.
This is because you are more strongly (individually, not the whole of our species) to maximize your survival opportunities than your pleasure opportuinities. If it is the case, for instance, that you would accept to become an entity with a constant focus of attention into almost nothing (a meditating entity) instead of having loads of fun for one fourth of the time (say, 1000 versus 4000 years) this means you are a survival optimization process.
You were not designed for this, you were designed to maximize genetic fitness.
And you were designed to maximize memetic fitness. You have been designed by two major forces composed of many many minor forces.
You have decided, morally, to abdicate all this plurality in the name of conscious survival.
You praise individuality, and you praise persistence.
I would suggest to let one more meme take over your mind. The meme of fun. Optimize for fun, don’t lead us into a universe of “sperm donors” who detect minimal entropy spaces to be at for longer. Don’t lead us here: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html
I would not, or at least probably would not. For sufficiently drastic survival ratio, I might. I would not, because humor and art are tied far too directly into the sense of fun; an excellent game is art just as much as Guernica, Citizen Kane, or a Beethoven symphony, and losing that entire section of the aesthetic sense would spoil too many fun things.
Of course, whatever senses replaced our senses of art/humor might bring other, equal fun with them. In which case I’d be more inclined to accept the deal.
I’m fine with a galaxy without humor, music, or art. I’d sacrifice all of that reproductive fitness signalling (or whatever it is) to maximize my persistence odds as a subjective conscious entity, if that “dilemma” was presented to me.
This is because you are more strongly (individually, not the whole of our species) to maximize your survival opportunities than your pleasure opportuinities. If it is the case, for instance, that you would accept to become an entity with a constant focus of attention into almost nothing (a meditating entity) instead of having loads of fun for one fourth of the time (say, 1000 versus 4000 years) this means you are a survival optimization process. You were not designed for this, you were designed to maximize genetic fitness. And you were designed to maximize memetic fitness. You have been designed by two major forces composed of many many minor forces. You have decided, morally, to abdicate all this plurality in the name of conscious survival. You praise individuality, and you praise persistence. I would suggest to let one more meme take over your mind. The meme of fun. Optimize for fun, don’t lead us into a universe of “sperm donors” who detect minimal entropy spaces to be at for longer. Don’t lead us here: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html
I would not, or at least probably would not. For sufficiently drastic survival ratio, I might. I would not, because humor and art are tied far too directly into the sense of fun; an excellent game is art just as much as Guernica, Citizen Kane, or a Beethoven symphony, and losing that entire section of the aesthetic sense would spoil too many fun things.
Of course, whatever senses replaced our senses of art/humor might bring other, equal fun with them. In which case I’d be more inclined to accept the deal.