Wireheads are still experiencing the pleasure. They are not in suspended animation, stuff is still happening in their brains. They don’t affect the outside world anymore (beyond ensuring their survival), but so what? The fact that it is superficially similar to death does not bother me at all. If no more optimization is needed, why bother with optimizing?
You’re essentially just restating the basic intuition against wireheading, just more emphatically. I find it just as incomprehensible.
(For completeness, I don’t share your aversion to death at all. I’m totally indifferent to it. I essentially agree with teageegeepea here. Maybe this influences the intuition.)
I do not mean that Wireheading is metaphorical death. It is not just an emotionally charged statement that means I am really against Wireheading. I mean that Wireheading is literally death.
The cluster of death-space consists of more than just stopping breathing. I am arguing that the important boundary in the definition-space of death is not ‘stopped breathing’ but ‘inability to affect the outside world’. Imagine the following Omega enabled events, rest assured that none of them are reversible once Omega stops toying with you and finishes this experiment. Ask yourself if you consider the following states death:
1 -Omega transforms your body into a corpse! You cannot move or do anything a corpse cannot do.
2-Omega transforms your body into a corpse, but lets you keep moving and taking actions. You return back to work on monday, and thankfully there’s no extra smell.
3-Omega teleports you to a dimension of nothingness, and you’re stuck there for all eternity.
4-Omega teleports you to a dimension full of nothingness, then brings you back out a year later.
5-Omega turns you into a tree. You’re not able to do anything a tree cannot do, like think, move, or anything of the sort.
6-Omega turns you into a tree, but gives you the power to move and think and talk in rhymes.
7-Omega keeps your body the same, but severs your ability to do anything including moving your eyes or blinking. Luckily your autonomic system keeps you breathing and someone puts you a nutrient drip before that ‘not eating’ thing catches up to you.
8-Omega keeps your body the same, but separates your ability to do anything into a separate non-corporeal facility. IE, you can move things with your mind.
9-Omega replaces your body with a corpse doll and shifts you into a parallel plane where you can view the world but not interact.
10-Omega replaces your body with a corpse doll and shifts you into a parallel plane where you can both view and interact with the world.
All the odd numbers seem straight up death to me. 1 is regular death, 3 is getting sucked into a black hole, 5 is well dieing and having a tree planted on you, 7 is brain death, and 9 is christian death. All the even numbers, even though they’re identical except your how much you can effect the world, feel like you’re gaining superpowers. Well, except that solitary confinement for a year one. The meaningful divide of death is not if we’ve stopped breathing or even stopped existing, it’s whether or not we can effect the outside world.
Being strapped into the pleasure machine lets us still breath like brain death, but takes away our ability to do anything, just like brain death. Wireheading that takes away our ability to effect the outside world kills us.
(Thanks for the clarification, that makes your comment much clearer.)
How would 2) work? What do you mean, my body becomes a corpse, but goes to work? As a corpse, I won’t have blood circulation for example, so how could I walk? Unless Omega magically turns me into an actual zombie, but what’s the use of thinking about magic?
Similarly, 6) ain’t a tree, but at best a brain stuck in a tree.
Does 3) include myself as separate from the nothingness? So I’m essentially “floating” in nothingness, kinda like a Boltzmann brain?
8) isn’t possible in principle. There are no separate mental events, unless Omega can change metaphysics, but that’s uninteresting.
I’d consider 3), 4), 7), 9) and 10) totally alive, assuming mental processing is still happening, stuff is still getting experienced, it’s just that any outgoing signals to influence the world are getting ignored. If this isn’t happening (e.g. I’m in a deep coma), then I’m straight-up dead. As long as I have subjective experiences, I’m alive.
Overall though, arguing about the definition of “death” isn’t gonna be useful.
(Omega was supplied so that magical scenarios would be possible for the thought experiment.)
My definition vs your definition of death is very enlightening in light of our differences on wireheading.
You view being alive as being able to think, to receive input and experience. I view being alive as being able to act, to change and shape the world. This division cuts through the experience of wireheading; it is the state of thinking without the ability to act. Life to you; death to me. I would venture a guess that anyone who is pro-wireheading would hold your view of life/death while anyone who is anti-wireheading would hold my view of life/death.
You wanted to know why all those other arguments sounded good to everybody, but not to you. We have incompatible priors. There is no sufficiently convincing argument that can cross the gulf between life and death. I do not have sufficient rationalist superpowers to try and change your priors (or even make you want to change them, as I wouldn’t want to change mine). But if you wish to understand what other people are thinking as they reject Wireheading, simply close your eyes and try and imagine the choice you would make if you instead believed your time of death were the instant you never acted upon the world again.
They are not being convinced by insufficient arguments. They are merely starting from a different metaphysical position than you.
That doesn’t dissolve the problem completely for me, it just moves the confusion from “Why do humans disagree on wireheading?” to “Why do humans have different views on what constitutes death?”. Is it just something you memetically pick up and that then dominates your values?
I’d rather assume that the (hypothetical) value difference comes first and we then use this to classify what counts as “dead”. “yup, can still get pleasure there, I must be alive” vs. “nope, can’t affect the external world, I must be dead”.
That is a very interesting question. I’m sure I feel quite as puzzled looking at you from this side as you do looking at me from that side. I would also assume that there is some other first factor.
Sadly, it would be a bit outside of the depth of my understanding of metaphysics (and the scope of this page) to try and discover what it is. Still, I am intrigued about it and will keep thinking on the subject.
Wireheads are still experiencing the pleasure. They are not in suspended animation, stuff is still happening in their brains. They don’t affect the outside world anymore (beyond ensuring their survival), but so what? The fact that it is superficially similar to death does not bother me at all. If no more optimization is needed, why bother with optimizing?
You’re essentially just restating the basic intuition against wireheading, just more emphatically. I find it just as incomprehensible.
(For completeness, I don’t share your aversion to death at all. I’m totally indifferent to it. I essentially agree with teageegeepea here. Maybe this influences the intuition.)
I do not mean that Wireheading is metaphorical death. It is not just an emotionally charged statement that means I am really against Wireheading. I mean that Wireheading is literally death.
The cluster of death-space consists of more than just stopping breathing. I am arguing that the important boundary in the definition-space of death is not ‘stopped breathing’ but ‘inability to affect the outside world’. Imagine the following Omega enabled events, rest assured that none of them are reversible once Omega stops toying with you and finishes this experiment. Ask yourself if you consider the following states death:
1 -Omega transforms your body into a corpse! You cannot move or do anything a corpse cannot do.
2-Omega transforms your body into a corpse, but lets you keep moving and taking actions. You return back to work on monday, and thankfully there’s no extra smell.
3-Omega teleports you to a dimension of nothingness, and you’re stuck there for all eternity.
4-Omega teleports you to a dimension full of nothingness, then brings you back out a year later.
5-Omega turns you into a tree. You’re not able to do anything a tree cannot do, like think, move, or anything of the sort.
6-Omega turns you into a tree, but gives you the power to move and think and talk in rhymes.
7-Omega keeps your body the same, but severs your ability to do anything including moving your eyes or blinking. Luckily your autonomic system keeps you breathing and someone puts you a nutrient drip before that ‘not eating’ thing catches up to you.
8-Omega keeps your body the same, but separates your ability to do anything into a separate non-corporeal facility. IE, you can move things with your mind.
9-Omega replaces your body with a corpse doll and shifts you into a parallel plane where you can view the world but not interact.
10-Omega replaces your body with a corpse doll and shifts you into a parallel plane where you can both view and interact with the world.
All the odd numbers seem straight up death to me. 1 is regular death, 3 is getting sucked into a black hole, 5 is well dieing and having a tree planted on you, 7 is brain death, and 9 is christian death. All the even numbers, even though they’re identical except your how much you can effect the world, feel like you’re gaining superpowers. Well, except that solitary confinement for a year one. The meaningful divide of death is not if we’ve stopped breathing or even stopped existing, it’s whether or not we can effect the outside world.
Being strapped into the pleasure machine lets us still breath like brain death, but takes away our ability to do anything, just like brain death. Wireheading that takes away our ability to effect the outside world kills us.
(Thanks for the clarification, that makes your comment much clearer.)
How would 2) work? What do you mean, my body becomes a corpse, but goes to work? As a corpse, I won’t have blood circulation for example, so how could I walk? Unless Omega magically turns me into an actual zombie, but what’s the use of thinking about magic?
Similarly, 6) ain’t a tree, but at best a brain stuck in a tree.
Does 3) include myself as separate from the nothingness? So I’m essentially “floating” in nothingness, kinda like a Boltzmann brain?
8) isn’t possible in principle. There are no separate mental events, unless Omega can change metaphysics, but that’s uninteresting.
I’d consider 3), 4), 7), 9) and 10) totally alive, assuming mental processing is still happening, stuff is still getting experienced, it’s just that any outgoing signals to influence the world are getting ignored. If this isn’t happening (e.g. I’m in a deep coma), then I’m straight-up dead. As long as I have subjective experiences, I’m alive.
Overall though, arguing about the definition of “death” isn’t gonna be useful.
(Omega was supplied so that magical scenarios would be possible for the thought experiment.)
My definition vs your definition of death is very enlightening in light of our differences on wireheading.
You view being alive as being able to think, to receive input and experience. I view being alive as being able to act, to change and shape the world. This division cuts through the experience of wireheading; it is the state of thinking without the ability to act. Life to you; death to me. I would venture a guess that anyone who is pro-wireheading would hold your view of life/death while anyone who is anti-wireheading would hold my view of life/death.
You wanted to know why all those other arguments sounded good to everybody, but not to you. We have incompatible priors. There is no sufficiently convincing argument that can cross the gulf between life and death. I do not have sufficient rationalist superpowers to try and change your priors (or even make you want to change them, as I wouldn’t want to change mine). But if you wish to understand what other people are thinking as they reject Wireheading, simply close your eyes and try and imagine the choice you would make if you instead believed your time of death were the instant you never acted upon the world again.
They are not being convinced by insufficient arguments. They are merely starting from a different metaphysical position than you.
That doesn’t dissolve the problem completely for me, it just moves the confusion from “Why do humans disagree on wireheading?” to “Why do humans have different views on what constitutes death?”. Is it just something you memetically pick up and that then dominates your values?
I’d rather assume that the (hypothetical) value difference comes first and we then use this to classify what counts as “dead”. “yup, can still get pleasure there, I must be alive” vs. “nope, can’t affect the external world, I must be dead”.
That is a very interesting question. I’m sure I feel quite as puzzled looking at you from this side as you do looking at me from that side. I would also assume that there is some other first factor.
Sadly, it would be a bit outside of the depth of my understanding of metaphysics (and the scope of this page) to try and discover what it is. Still, I am intrigued about it and will keep thinking on the subject.
unpack “the world” and you’ll maybe sympathize with wireheaders more.