The blog of Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) is generally quite awesome from a rationalist perspective, but one recent post really stood out for me: Happiness Button.
Suppose humans were born with magical buttons on their foreheads. When someone else pushes your button, it makes you very happy. But like tickling, it only works when someone else presses it. Imagine it’s easy to use. You just reach over, press it once, and the other person becomes wildly happy for a few minutes.
Karma does make me feel important, but when it comes to happiness karma can’t hold a candle to loud music, alcohol and girls (preferably in combination). I wish more people recognized these for the eternal universal values they are. If only someone invented a button to send me some loud music, alcohol and girls, that would be the ultimate startup ever.
Classical game theorists establish a scientific consensus that the only rational course of action is not to push the buttons. Anyone who does is regarded with contempt or pity and gets lowered in the social stratum, before finally managing to rationalize the idea out of conscious attention, with the help of the instinct to conformity. A few free-riders smugly teach the remaining naive pushers a bitter lesson, only to stop receiving the benefit. Everyone gets back to business as usual, crazy people spinning the wheels of a mad world.
Are you saying that classical game theorists would model the button-pushing game as one-shot PD? Why would they fail to notice the repetitive nature of the game?
I’d be far more willing to believe in game theorists calling for defection on the iterated PD than in mathematicians steering mainstream culture.
However, with the positive-sum nature of this game, I’d expect theorists to go with Schelling instead of Nash; and then be completely disregarded by the general public who categorize it under “physical ways of causing pleasure” and put sexual taboos on it.
Here’s what the theory actually says: if you know the number of iterations exactly, it’s a Nash equilibrium for both to defect on all iterations. But if you know the chance that this iteration will be the last, and this chance isn’t too high (e.g. below 1⁄3, can’t be bothered to give an exact value right now), it’s a Nash equilibrium for both to cooperate as long as the opponent has cooperated on previous iterations.
I actually do think people in such a world ought not to press buttons. But not very strongly… only about the same “oughtnotness” as people ought not to waste time looking at porn.
The argument is the same: Aren’t there better things we could be doing?
Ideally, in button-world, people will devise a way to remove their buttons.
But if that couldn’t be done, and we’re seriously asking “what would happen?” I suppose it might end up being treated like sex. Having one’s button publicly visible is “indecent”—buttons are only pushed in private. Etc. etc.
I suppose it might end up being treated like sex. Having one’s button publicly visible is “indecent”—buttons are only pushed in private.
The analogy to sex is rough. From a historical and evolutionary perspective, sex is treated the way it is because it leads to gene replication and parenthood, not because it leads to pleasure. The lack of side effects from the buttons makes them more comparable to rubbing someone’s back, smiling, or saying something nice to someone.
OK—well that’s one possibility. But in discussing either of these analogies, aren’t we just showing (a) that the pleasure-button scenario is underdetermined, because there are many different kinds of pleasure and (b) that it’s redundant, because people can actually give each other pats on the back, or hand-jobs or whatever.
I dunno, this strikes me as a somewhat sex-negative attitude. Responding seriously to your question about the better things we could be doing, it strikes me that we people spend most of our time doing worthless things. We seldom really know whether we are happy, what it means to be happy, or how what we are doing might connect to somebody’s future happiness.
If the buttons actually made people happy from time to time, it could be quite useful as a ‘reality check.’ People suspecting that X led to happiness could test and falsify their claim by seeing whether X produced the same mental/emotional state that the button did.
Obviously we shouldn’t spend all our time pressing buttons, having sex, or looking at porn. But I sometimes wonder whether we wouldn’t be better off if most people, especially in the developed world where labor seems to be over-supplied and the opportunity cost of not working is low, spent a couple hours a day doing things like that.
If the buttons actually made people happy from time to time, it could be quite useful as a ‘reality check.’ People suspecting that X led to happiness could test and falsify their claim by seeing whether X produced the same mental/emotional state that the button did.
Isn’t that a bit like snorting some coke (or perhaps just masturbating) after a happy experience (say, proving a particularly interesting theorem) to test whether it was really ‘happy’?
There are many different kinds of ‘happiness’, and what makes an experience a happy or an unhappy one is not at all simple to pin down. A kind of happiness that one can obtain at will, as often as desired, and which is unrelated to any “objective improvement” in oneself or the things one cares about, isn’t really happiness at all.
Pretend it’s new year’s eve and you’re planning some goals for next year—some things that, if you achieve them, you will look back with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Is ‘looking at lots of porn’ on your list (even assuming that it’s free and no-one was harmed in producing it)?
I don’t mean to imply anything about sex, because sex has a whole lot of things associated with it that make it extremely complicated. But the ‘pleasure button’ scenario gives us a clean slate to work from, and to me it seems an obvious reductio ad absurdum of the idea that pleasure = utility.
You seem to be confusing happiness with accomplishment:
A kind of happiness that one can obtain at will, as often as desired, and which is unrelated to any “objective improvement” in oneself or the things one cares about, isn’t really happiness at all.
Sure it is. It may not be accomplishment, or meaningfulness, but it is happiness, by definition. I think the confusion comes because you seem to value many other things more than happiness, such as pride and accomplishment. Happiness is just a feeling; it’s not defined as something that you need to value most, or gain the most utility from.
How do you distinguish a degenerate case of ‘happiness’ from ‘satiation of a need’. Is the smoker or heroin addict made ‘happy’ by their fix? Does a glass of water make you ‘happy’ if you’re dying from thirst, or does it just satiate the thirst?
And can’t the same sensation be either ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ depending on the circumstances. A person with persistent sexual arousal syndrome isn’t made ‘happy’ by the orgasms they can’t help but ‘endure’.
The idea that there’s a “raw happiness feeling” detachable from the information content that goes with it is intuitively appealing but fatally flawed.
And can’t the same sensation be either ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ depending on the circumstances? A person with persistent sexual arousal syndrome isn’t made ‘happy’ by the orgasms they can’t help but ‘endure’.
Yes, this is true. We will need to assume that the button can analyze the context to determine how to provide happiness for the particular brain it’s attached to.
My point is that happiness is not necessarily associated with accomplishment or objective improvement in oneself (though it can be). In such a situation, some people might not value this kind of detached happiness, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happiness.
Depends on how you define happiness. If you define it as “how much dopamine is in my system” ,”joy” or “these are the neat brainwaves my brain is giving off” then yes, you could achieve happiness by pressing a button (in theory).
A lot of people seem to assume happiness = utility measured in utilons, which is a whole different thing altogether.
Sort of like seeing some one writhe in ecstasy after jamming a needle in their arm and saying, “I’m so happy I’m not a heroin addict.”
Depends on how you define happiness. If you define it as “how much dopamine is in my system” ,”joy” or “these are the neat brainwaves my brain is giving off” then yes, you can achieve happiness by pressing a button.
Oh, really? How can I get a cheap, legal, repeatable dopamine rush to my brain?
Edited my post to reflect your point. Although, I’m a young male and can achieve orgasm multiple times in under ten minutes with the aid of some lube and free porn. You probably didn’t want to know that.
It seems the pharma industry discovered the effect of PDE5 inhibitors on erectile dysfunction pretty much by accident. The stuff was initially developed to treat heart disease, initial tests showed it didn’t work, but male test subjects reported a useful side effect. Reminds me of the story of post-it notes: the guy who developed them actually wanted to create the ultimate glue, but sadly the result of his best efforts didn’t stick very well, so he just went ahead and commercialized what he had.
If big pharma is listening, I’d like to post a request for exercise pills.
Actually, orgasms are usually much less intense and don’t result in ejaculation if I achieve them in under a certain amount of amount of time. I find the best are in the 20-30 minute period.
A lot of people seem to assume happiness = utility measured in utilons, which is a whole different thing altogether.
Yes, I’ve noticed that assumption, and I think even Jeremy Bentham talked about pleasure in utility terms. I don’t think it’s accurate for everyone, for instance, someone who values accomplishment more than happiness will assign higher utility to choices that lead to unhappy accomplishment than to unproductive leisure.
That’s a strange definition of “happier”. They’re happier with a choice just because they prefer that choice? Even if they appear frustrated and tired and grumpy all the time? Even if they tell you they’re not happy and they prefer this unhappiness to not accomplishing anything?
(In real life, I suspect happy people actually accomplish more, but consider a hypothetical where you have to choose between unhappy accomplishment and unproductive leisure.)
Eliezer did this whole thing in the Fun Theory sequence. Yes, not doing anything would be very boring, and being filled with cool drugs sounds like a horror story to my current utility curve. Let’s hope the future isn’t some form of ironic hell.
AlephNeil, I was taking Scott Adams’ assertion that the button produces “happiness” at face value. I was being rather literal, I’m afraid. I think you’re right to worry that no actual mechanism we can imagine in the near future would act like Scott’s button.
I stand by my point, though, that if we really did have a literal happiness button, it would probably be a good thing.
As perhaps a somewhat more neutral example, I like to splash around in a swimming pool. It’s fun. I hope to do that a lot over the next year or so. If I successfully play in the pool a lot during time that otherwise might have been spent reading marginally interesting articles, staring into space, harassing roommates, or working overtime on projects I don’t care about, I will consider it a minor accomplishment.
More to the point, if regular bouts of aquatic playtime keep me well-adjusted and accurately tuned-in to what it means to be happy, then I will rationally expect to accomplish all kinds of other things that make me and others happy. I will consider this to be a moderate accomplishment.
There is a difference between pleasure and utility, but I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all to have a pleasure term in one’s utility function. A more pleasant life, all else being equal, is a better one. There may be diminishing returns involved, but, well, that’s why we shouldn’t literally spend all day pressing the button.
How does that work? I suppose it makes sense a little considering that the world has to go on and can’t stop because everyones on the ground being “happy”, but it wouldn’t mean that people wouldn’t do it, or even that it wouldn’t be the “rational” thing to do.
Is everyone missing the obvious subtext in the original article—that we already live in just such a world but the button is located not on the forehead but in the crotch?
Perhaps some people would give their button-pushing services away for free, to anyone who asked. Let’s call those people generous, or as they would become known in this hypothetical world: crazy sluts.
I see that subtext, but I also see a subtext of geeks blaming the obvious irrationality of everyone else for them not getting any, like, it’s just poking a button, right?
Except that sex, unlike the button in the story, doesn’t always make people happy. Sometimes, for some people, it comes with complications that decrease net utility. (Also, it is possible to push your own button with sex.)
Sure, but it’s not my comparison—I’m just saying it appears to be the obvious subtext of the original article.
Button pushing would become an issue of power and politics within relationships and within business. The rich and famous would get their buttons pushed all day long, while the lonely would fantasize about how great that would be.
The rich and famous would get their buttons pushed all day long, while the lonely would fantasize about how great that would be.
But two poor, “lonely” people could just get together and push each others buttons. Thats the problem with this, any two people that can cooperate with each other can get the advantage. There was once an expiriment to evolve different programs in a genetic algorithm that could play the prisoners dilema. I’m not sure exactly how it was organized, which would really make or break different strategies, but the result was a program which always cooperated except when the other wasn’t and it continued refusing to cooperate with the other untill it believed they were “even”.
I’m not trying to argue for or against the comparison. Would you agree that the subtext exists in the original article or do you think I’m over-interpreting?
I think the best analogy would be drugs, but those have bad things associated with them that the button example doesn’t. They take up money, they cause health problems, etc.
A social custom would be established that buttons are only to be pressed by knocking foreheads together. Offering to press a button in a fashion that doesn’t ensure mutuality is seen as a pathetic display of low status.
Pushing someone’s happiness button is like doing them a favor, or giving them a gift. Do we have social customs that demand favors and gifts always be exchanged simultaneously? Well, there are some customs like that, but in general no, because we have memory and can keep mental score.
Hah. Status is relative, remember? Your setup just ensures that “dodging” at the last moment, getting your button pressed without pressing theirs, is seen as a glorious display of high status.
The blog of Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) is generally quite awesome from a rationalist perspective, but one recent post really stood out for me: Happiness Button.
We already have these buttons on LessWrong… ;)
Karma does make me feel important, but when it comes to happiness karma can’t hold a candle to loud music, alcohol and girls (preferably in combination). I wish more people recognized these for the eternal universal values they are. If only someone invented a button to send me some loud music, alcohol and girls, that would be the ultimate startup ever.
Classical game theorists establish a scientific consensus that the only rational course of action is not to push the buttons. Anyone who does is regarded with contempt or pity and gets lowered in the social stratum, before finally managing to rationalize the idea out of conscious attention, with the help of the instinct to conformity. A few free-riders smugly teach the remaining naive pushers a bitter lesson, only to stop receiving the benefit. Everyone gets back to business as usual, crazy people spinning the wheels of a mad world.
Are you saying that classical game theorists would model the button-pushing game as one-shot PD? Why would they fail to notice the repetitive nature of the game?
I’d be far more willing to believe in game theorists calling for defection on the iterated PD than in mathematicians steering mainstream culture.
However, with the positive-sum nature of this game, I’d expect theorists to go with Schelling instead of Nash; and then be completely disregarded by the general public who categorize it under “physical ways of causing pleasure” and put sexual taboos on it.
The theory says to defect in the iterated dilemma as well (under some assumptions).
Here’s what the theory actually says: if you know the number of iterations exactly, it’s a Nash equilibrium for both to defect on all iterations. But if you know the chance that this iteration will be the last, and this chance isn’t too high (e.g. below 1⁄3, can’t be bothered to give an exact value right now), it’s a Nash equilibrium for both to cooperate as long as the opponent has cooperated on previous iterations.
This comment was very entertaining… but...
I actually do think people in such a world ought not to press buttons. But not very strongly… only about the same “oughtnotness” as people ought not to waste time looking at porn.
The argument is the same: Aren’t there better things we could be doing?
Ideally, in button-world, people will devise a way to remove their buttons.
But if that couldn’t be done, and we’re seriously asking “what would happen?” I suppose it might end up being treated like sex. Having one’s button publicly visible is “indecent”—buttons are only pushed in private. Etc. etc.
The analogy to sex is rough. From a historical and evolutionary perspective, sex is treated the way it is because it leads to gene replication and parenthood, not because it leads to pleasure. The lack of side effects from the buttons makes them more comparable to rubbing someone’s back, smiling, or saying something nice to someone.
OK—well that’s one possibility. But in discussing either of these analogies, aren’t we just showing (a) that the pleasure-button scenario is underdetermined, because there are many different kinds of pleasure and (b) that it’s redundant, because people can actually give each other pats on the back, or hand-jobs or whatever.
I dunno, this strikes me as a somewhat sex-negative attitude. Responding seriously to your question about the better things we could be doing, it strikes me that we people spend most of our time doing worthless things. We seldom really know whether we are happy, what it means to be happy, or how what we are doing might connect to somebody’s future happiness.
If the buttons actually made people happy from time to time, it could be quite useful as a ‘reality check.’ People suspecting that X led to happiness could test and falsify their claim by seeing whether X produced the same mental/emotional state that the button did.
Obviously we shouldn’t spend all our time pressing buttons, having sex, or looking at porn. But I sometimes wonder whether we wouldn’t be better off if most people, especially in the developed world where labor seems to be over-supplied and the opportunity cost of not working is low, spent a couple hours a day doing things like that.
Isn’t that a bit like snorting some coke (or perhaps just masturbating) after a happy experience (say, proving a particularly interesting theorem) to test whether it was really ‘happy’?
There are many different kinds of ‘happiness’, and what makes an experience a happy or an unhappy one is not at all simple to pin down. A kind of happiness that one can obtain at will, as often as desired, and which is unrelated to any “objective improvement” in oneself or the things one cares about, isn’t really happiness at all.
Pretend it’s new year’s eve and you’re planning some goals for next year—some things that, if you achieve them, you will look back with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Is ‘looking at lots of porn’ on your list (even assuming that it’s free and no-one was harmed in producing it)?
I don’t mean to imply anything about sex, because sex has a whole lot of things associated with it that make it extremely complicated. But the ‘pleasure button’ scenario gives us a clean slate to work from, and to me it seems an obvious reductio ad absurdum of the idea that pleasure = utility.
You seem to be confusing happiness with accomplishment:
Sure it is. It may not be accomplishment, or meaningfulness, but it is happiness, by definition. I think the confusion comes because you seem to value many other things more than happiness, such as pride and accomplishment. Happiness is just a feeling; it’s not defined as something that you need to value most, or gain the most utility from.
How do you distinguish a degenerate case of ‘happiness’ from ‘satiation of a need’. Is the smoker or heroin addict made ‘happy’ by their fix? Does a glass of water make you ‘happy’ if you’re dying from thirst, or does it just satiate the thirst?
And can’t the same sensation be either ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ depending on the circumstances. A person with persistent sexual arousal syndrome isn’t made ‘happy’ by the orgasms they can’t help but ‘endure’.
The idea that there’s a “raw happiness feeling” detachable from the information content that goes with it is intuitively appealing but fatally flawed.
Yes, this is true. We will need to assume that the button can analyze the context to determine how to provide happiness for the particular brain it’s attached to.
My point is that happiness is not necessarily associated with accomplishment or objective improvement in oneself (though it can be). In such a situation, some people might not value this kind of detached happiness, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happiness.
Depends on how you define happiness. If you define it as “how much dopamine is in my system” ,”joy” or “these are the neat brainwaves my brain is giving off” then yes, you could achieve happiness by pressing a button (in theory).
A lot of people seem to assume happiness = utility measured in utilons, which is a whole different thing altogether.
Sort of like seeing some one writhe in ecstasy after jamming a needle in their arm and saying, “I’m so happy I’m not a heroin addict.”
Oh, really? How can I get a cheap, legal, repeatable dopamine rush to my brain?
Edited my post to reflect your point. Although, I’m a young male and can achieve orgasm multiple times in under ten minutes with the aid of some lube and free porn. You probably didn’t want to know that.
That’s amazing. A drug that could eliminate refractory period like that would sell better than Viagra.
It seems the pharma industry discovered the effect of PDE5 inhibitors on erectile dysfunction pretty much by accident. The stuff was initially developed to treat heart disease, initial tests showed it didn’t work, but male test subjects reported a useful side effect. Reminds me of the story of post-it notes: the guy who developed them actually wanted to create the ultimate glue, but sadly the result of his best efforts didn’t stick very well, so he just went ahead and commercialized what he had.
If big pharma is listening, I’d like to post a request for exercise pills.
Actually, orgasms are usually much less intense and don’t result in ejaculation if I achieve them in under a certain amount of amount of time. I find the best are in the 20-30 minute period.
Yes, I’ve noticed that assumption, and I think even Jeremy Bentham talked about pleasure in utility terms. I don’t think it’s accurate for everyone, for instance, someone who values accomplishment more than happiness will assign higher utility to choices that lead to unhappy accomplishment than to unproductive leisure.
...and then they’re happier working. By definition. Welcome to semantics.
That’s a strange definition of “happier”. They’re happier with a choice just because they prefer that choice? Even if they appear frustrated and tired and grumpy all the time? Even if they tell you they’re not happy and they prefer this unhappiness to not accomplishing anything?
(In real life, I suspect happy people actually accomplish more, but consider a hypothetical where you have to choose between unhappy accomplishment and unproductive leisure.)
Eliezer did this whole thing in the Fun Theory sequence. Yes, not doing anything would be very boring, and being filled with cool drugs sounds like a horror story to my current utility curve. Let’s hope the future isn’t some form of ironic hell.
AlephNeil, I was taking Scott Adams’ assertion that the button produces “happiness” at face value. I was being rather literal, I’m afraid. I think you’re right to worry that no actual mechanism we can imagine in the near future would act like Scott’s button.
I stand by my point, though, that if we really did have a literal happiness button, it would probably be a good thing.
As perhaps a somewhat more neutral example, I like to splash around in a swimming pool. It’s fun. I hope to do that a lot over the next year or so. If I successfully play in the pool a lot during time that otherwise might have been spent reading marginally interesting articles, staring into space, harassing roommates, or working overtime on projects I don’t care about, I will consider it a minor accomplishment.
More to the point, if regular bouts of aquatic playtime keep me well-adjusted and accurately tuned-in to what it means to be happy, then I will rationally expect to accomplish all kinds of other things that make me and others happy. I will consider this to be a moderate accomplishment.
There is a difference between pleasure and utility, but I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all to have a pleasure term in one’s utility function. A more pleasant life, all else being equal, is a better one. There may be diminishing returns involved, but, well, that’s why we shouldn’t literally spend all day pressing the button.
That depends on how people react. It’s at least plausible that people need some amount of pleasure in order to be able to focus on their other goals.
How does that work? I suppose it makes sense a little considering that the world has to go on and can’t stop because everyones on the ground being “happy”, but it wouldn’t mean that people wouldn’t do it, or even that it wouldn’t be the “rational” thing to do.
Is everyone missing the obvious subtext in the original article—that we already live in just such a world but the button is located not on the forehead but in the crotch?
But you can touch that button yourself...
How does that compare to when someone else touches your button with their button?
I’ve never done that, so I don’t know.
I see that subtext, but I also see a subtext of geeks blaming the obvious irrationality of everyone else for them not getting any, like, it’s just poking a button, right?
Except that sex, unlike the button in the story, doesn’t always make people happy. Sometimes, for some people, it comes with complications that decrease net utility. (Also, it is possible to push your own button with sex.)
Sure, but it’s not my comparison—I’m just saying it appears to be the obvious subtext of the original article.
But two poor, “lonely” people could just get together and push each others buttons. Thats the problem with this, any two people that can cooperate with each other can get the advantage. There was once an expiriment to evolve different programs in a genetic algorithm that could play the prisoners dilema. I’m not sure exactly how it was organized, which would really make or break different strategies, but the result was a program which always cooperated except when the other wasn’t and it continued refusing to cooperate with the other untill it believed they were “even”.
Are you thinking of tit for tat?
I’m not trying to argue for or against the comparison. Would you agree that the subtext exists in the original article or do you think I’m over-interpreting?
No, the subtext is definitely there in the original article. At least, I saw it immediately, as did most of the commenters:
I think the best analogy would be drugs, but those have bad things associated with them that the button example doesn’t. They take up money, they cause health problems, etc.
That would not model the True Prisoner’s Dilemma.
What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?
A social custom would be established that buttons are only to be pressed by knocking foreheads together. Offering to press a button in a fashion that doesn’t ensure mutuality is seen as a pathetic display of low status.
Pushing someone’s happiness button is like doing them a favor, or giving them a gift. Do we have social customs that demand favors and gifts always be exchanged simultaneously? Well, there are some customs like that, but in general no, because we have memory and can keep mental score.
Hah. Status is relative, remember? Your setup just ensures that “dodging” at the last moment, getting your button pressed without pressing theirs, is seen as a glorious display of high status.