Is there any practical reason why nobody is pursuing wireheading in humans, at least to a limited degree? (I mean actual intracranial stimulation, not novel drugs etc.). As far as I know, there were some experiments with rats in the 60s & 70s, but I haven’t heard of recent research in e.g. macaques.
I know that wireheading isn’t something most people seek, but
It seems way easier than many other things (we already did it in rats! how hard can it be!)
The reports I’ve read (involving human subjects whose brains were stimulated during operations) indicate that intracranial stimulation has both no tolerance development and feels really really nice. Surely, there could be ways of creating functional humans with long-term intracranial stimulation!
I’m sort of confused why not more people have pursued this, although I have to admit I haven’t researched this very much. Maybe it’s a harder technical problem than I am thinking.
I suspect that even if wireheading not a hard engineering problem, getting regulatory approval would be expensive. Additionally, superstimuli like sugary soft drinks and reddit are already capable of producing strong positive feelings inexpensively. For these reasons, I wonder how profitable it would be to research and commercialize wireheading technologies.
I suspect that the pleasure received from social media & energy-dense food is far lower than what is achievable through wireheading (you could e.g. just stimulate the areas activated when consuming social media/energy dense food), and there are far more pleasurable activities than surfing reddit & drinking mountain dew, e.g. an orgasm.
I agree with regulatory hurdles. I am not sure about the profitability – my current model of humans predicts that they 1. mostly act as adaption-executers, and 2. if they act more agentially, they often optimize for things other than happiness (how many people have read basic happiness research? how many write a gratitude-journal?).
Neuralink seems more focused on information exchange, which seems a way harder challenge than just stimulation, but perhaps that will open up new avenues.
Browsing social media for a few hours and talking to friends for a few hours will each give me a high that feels about the same, but the high from social media also feels sickening, as though I’m on drugs. Similarly, junk food is often so unhealthy that it is literally sickening.
My assumption was that wireheading would impart both a higher level of pleasure and a greater feeling of sickness than current superstimuli, but now that I have read your perspective, I no longer think that that is a valid assumption. I still would not wirehead myself, but now I understand why you are confused that wireheading is not being pursued much these days.
Right. My intuition was something like “MDMA, but constantly” (which isn’t sickening, at least to me). I definitely get the “sickening”/”headache” aspect of social media.
Is there any practical reason why nobody is pursuing wireheading in humans, at least to a limited degree? (I mean actual intracranial stimulation, not novel drugs etc.). As far as I know, there were some experiments with rats in the 60s & 70s, but I haven’t heard of recent research in e.g. macaques.
I know that wireheading isn’t something most people seek, but
It seems way easier than many other things (we already did it in rats! how hard can it be!)
The reports I’ve read (involving human subjects whose brains were stimulated during operations) indicate that intracranial stimulation has both no tolerance development and feels really really nice. Surely, there could be ways of creating functional humans with long-term intracranial stimulation!
I’m sort of confused why not more people have pursued this, although I have to admit I haven’t researched this very much. Maybe it’s a harder technical problem than I am thinking.
I suspect that even if wireheading not a hard engineering problem, getting regulatory approval would be expensive. Additionally, superstimuli like sugary soft drinks and reddit are already capable of producing strong positive feelings inexpensively. For these reasons, I wonder how profitable it would be to research and commercialize wireheading technologies.
For what it’s worth, though, Neuralink seems to have made quite a bit of progress towards a similar goal of enabling amputees to control prosthetics mentally. Perhaps work by Neuralink and its competitors will lead to more work on actual wireheading in the future.
I suspect that the pleasure received from social media & energy-dense food is far lower than what is achievable through wireheading (you could e.g. just stimulate the areas activated when consuming social media/energy dense food), and there are far more pleasurable activities than surfing reddit & drinking mountain dew, e.g. an orgasm.
I agree with regulatory hurdles. I am not sure about the profitability – my current model of humans predicts that they 1. mostly act as adaption-executers, and 2. if they act more agentially, they often optimize for things other than happiness (how many people have read basic happiness research? how many write a gratitude-journal?).
Neuralink seems more focused on information exchange, which seems a way harder challenge than just stimulation, but perhaps that will open up new avenues.
Browsing social media for a few hours and talking to friends for a few hours will each give me a high that feels about the same, but the high from social media also feels sickening, as though I’m on drugs. Similarly, junk food is often so unhealthy that it is literally sickening.
My assumption was that wireheading would impart both a higher level of pleasure and a greater feeling of sickness than current superstimuli, but now that I have read your perspective, I no longer think that that is a valid assumption. I still would not wirehead myself, but now I understand why you are confused that wireheading is not being pursued much these days.
Right. My intuition was something like “MDMA, but constantly” (which isn’t sickening, at least to me). I definitely get the “sickening”/”headache” aspect of social media.