Rewards already do matter. It describes people’s behavior well (see PCT) and makes introspective sense.
PCT is not good to cite in this connection. PCT does not speak of rewards. According to PCT, behaviour is performed in order to control perceptions, i.e. to maintain those perceptions at their reference levels.
While it is possible for a control system to be organised around maximising something labelled a reward (or minimising something labelled a penalty), that is just one particular class of possible ways of making a control system. Unless one has specifically observed that organisation, there are no grounds for concluding that reward is involved just because something is made of control systems.
Good point, I oversimplified here. I will consider this in more detail, but it naively, isn’t this irrelevant in terms of wireheading? Maintaining perceptions is maybe a bit trickier to do, but there would still be obvious shortcuts. Maybe if these perceptions couldn’t be simplified in any relevant way, then we’d need at least a full-on matrix and that would disqualify wireheading.
PCT is not good to cite in this connection. PCT does not speak of rewards. According to PCT, behaviour is performed in order to control perceptions, i.e. to maintain those perceptions at their reference levels.
While it is possible for a control system to be organised around maximising something labelled a reward (or minimising something labelled a penalty), that is just one particular class of possible ways of making a control system. Unless one has specifically observed that organisation, there are no grounds for concluding that reward is involved just because something is made of control systems.
Good point, I oversimplified here. I will consider this in more detail, but it naively, isn’t this irrelevant in terms of wireheading? Maintaining perceptions is maybe a bit trickier to do, but there would still be obvious shortcuts. Maybe if these perceptions couldn’t be simplified in any relevant way, then we’d need at least a full-on matrix and that would disqualify wireheading.