Further to my last comment, it occurs to me that pretty much everyone is a wirehead already. Drink diet soda? You’re a wirehead. Have sexual relations with birth control? Wireheading. Masturbate to internet porn? Wireheading. Ever eat junk food? Wireheading.
I was reading online that for a mere $10,000, a man can hire a woman in India to be a surrogate mother for him. Just send $10,000 and a sperm sample and in 9 months you can go pick up your child. Why am I not spending all my money to make third world children who bear my genes? I guess it’s because I’m too much of a wirehead already.
What makes a utility function “true”? If I choose to literally wirehead—implant electrodes—I can sign a statement saying I consider my “true” utility function to be optimized by wireheading. Does that mean I’m not wireheading in your sense?
Humans are adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers. A mother’s love of her child enters into her utility function independently of her desire to maximize inclusive fitness, even though the relevant neuroanatomy is the result of an optimization process maximizing only inclusive fitness.
Well fine, but what if somebody decides to execute his adaptation by means of direct stimulation of the brain center in question. Surely that counts as wireheading, no?
I eiher don’t understand your hypothetical or you didn’t understand the linked post.
But I’ll try: if you’re talking about an agent whose utility function really specifies stimulating one’s brain with contraptions involving wires (call this wireheading#) as a terminal value [ETA: or, more plausibly, specifies subjective pleasure as a terminal value], then their wireheading# activities are not [ETA: necessarily] wireheading as discussed here, it seems to me.
Further to my last comment, it occurs to me that pretty much everyone is a wirehead already. Drink diet soda? You’re a wirehead. Have sexual relations with birth control? Wireheading. Masturbate to internet porn? Wireheading. Ever eat junk food? Wireheading.
I was reading online that for a mere $10,000, a man can hire a woman in India to be a surrogate mother for him. Just send $10,000 and a sperm sample and in 9 months you can go pick up your child. Why am I not spending all my money to make third world children who bear my genes? I guess it’s because I’m too much of a wirehead already.
You are a wirehead if you consider your true utility function to be genetic fitness.
What makes a utility function “true”? If I choose to literally wirehead—implant electrodes—I can sign a statement saying I consider my “true” utility function to be optimized by wireheading. Does that mean I’m not wireheading in your sense?
Not according to most existing usage of the term.
Well what else could it be? :)
Humans are adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers. A mother’s love of her child enters into her utility function independently of her desire to maximize inclusive fitness, even though the relevant neuroanatomy is the result of an optimization process maximizing only inclusive fitness.
Is that descriptive or normative?
Purely descriptive. On a broadly subjectivist metaethics, it also has normative implications.
Well fine, but what if somebody decides to execute his adaptation by means of direct stimulation of the brain center in question. Surely that counts as wireheading, no?
I eiher don’t understand your hypothetical or you didn’t understand the linked post.
But I’ll try: if you’re talking about an agent whose utility function really specifies stimulating one’s brain with contraptions involving wires (call this wireheading#) as a terminal value [ETA: or, more plausibly, specifies subjective pleasure as a terminal value], then their wireheading# activities are not [ETA: necessarily] wireheading as discussed here, it seems to me.
Let’s do this: Can you give me a few examples of human behavior which you see as execution of adaptations?