I would save the drunk friend (unless I had some kind of special knowledge, such as that the friend got drunk in order to enable him or herself to go through with a plan to indulge a considered and stable sober desire for death). In the case of the depressed friend, I’d want to refer to my best available knowledge of what that friend would have said about the situation prior to acquiring the neurotransmitter imbalance, and act accordingly.
It seems you think paternalism is okay if it is pure in intent and flawless in execution.
You’re twisting my words. I said that FAI paternalism would be different—which it would be, qualitatively and quantitatively. “Pure in intent and flawless in execution” are very fuzzy words, prone to being interpreted differently by different people, and only a very specific set of interpretations of those words would describe FAI.
It has been shown that vulnerability to smoking addiction is due to a certain gene. Suppose we could create a virus that would silently spread through the human population and fix this gene in everyone, willing or not. Suppose our intent is pure, and we know that this virus would operate flawlessly, only affecting this gene and having no other effects.
Would you be in favor of releasing this virus?
I’m with Alicorn on this one: If it can be made into a contagious virus, it can almost certainly be made into a non-contagious one, and that would be the ethical thing to do. However, if it can’t be made into a non-contagious virus, I would personally not release it, and I’m going to refrain from predicting what a FAI would do in that case; part of the point of building a FAI is to be able to give those kinds of decisions to a mind that’s able to make unbiased (or much less biased, if you prefer; there’s a lot of room for improvement in any case) decisions that affect groups of people too large for humans to effectively model.
I understand. That makes some sense. Though smokers’ judgement is impaired by their addiction, one can imagine that at least they will have periods of sanity when they can choose to fix the addiction gene themselves.
We do appear to differ in the case when an infectious virus is the only option to help smokers fix that gene. I would release the virus in that case. I have no qualms taking that decision and absorbing the responsibility.
This seems contradictory to your earlier claims about wireheading. Say that some smokers get a lot of pleasure from smoking, and don’t want to stop, and in fact would experience more pleasure in their lives if they kept the addiction. You’d release the virus?
Apologies, Alicorn—I was confusing you with Adelene. I was paying all attention to the content and not enough to who is the author.
Only the first paragraph (but wire-heading is not death) is directed at your comment. The rest is actually directed at Adelene.
My point was that you used “you won’t regret it” as a point in favor of wireheading, whereas it does not serve as a point in favor of death.
Can you check the thread of this comment:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1o9/welcome_to_heaven/1iia?context=3#comments
and let me know what your response to that thread is?
I would save the drunk friend (unless I had some kind of special knowledge, such as that the friend got drunk in order to enable him or herself to go through with a plan to indulge a considered and stable sober desire for death). In the case of the depressed friend, I’d want to refer to my best available knowledge of what that friend would have said about the situation prior to acquiring the neurotransmitter imbalance, and act accordingly.
You’re twisting my words. I said that FAI paternalism would be different—which it would be, qualitatively and quantitatively. “Pure in intent and flawless in execution” are very fuzzy words, prone to being interpreted differently by different people, and only a very specific set of interpretations of those words would describe FAI.
I’m with Alicorn on this one: If it can be made into a contagious virus, it can almost certainly be made into a non-contagious one, and that would be the ethical thing to do. However, if it can’t be made into a non-contagious virus, I would personally not release it, and I’m going to refrain from predicting what a FAI would do in that case; part of the point of building a FAI is to be able to give those kinds of decisions to a mind that’s able to make unbiased (or much less biased, if you prefer; there’s a lot of room for improvement in any case) decisions that affect groups of people too large for humans to effectively model.
I understand. That makes some sense. Though smokers’ judgement is impaired by their addiction, one can imagine that at least they will have periods of sanity when they can choose to fix the addiction gene themselves.
We do appear to differ in the case when an infectious virus is the only option to help smokers fix that gene. I would release the virus in that case. I have no qualms taking that decision and absorbing the responsibility.
This seems contradictory to your earlier claims about wireheading. Say that some smokers get a lot of pleasure from smoking, and don’t want to stop, and in fact would experience more pleasure in their lives if they kept the addiction. You’d release the virus?