Aside from reachability or questions of malthusian repugnance (how many people can have this life, and should we make it slightly less pleasant to have more people experience it), I’m not very compelled by this story, because it seems … boring.
I don’t know if it’s universally human, or just particular to me, but I strongly value overcoming difficult challenges and having a positive impact on my fellow humans. This makes me uninterested in an easy, static, always-equally-pleasant existence. Sure, this should be available for those who want it, perhaps even for a few thousand years of their very long subjective lives. But there’s not a lot of meaning or interest to it overall, and I don’t see how it’ll remain satisfying once it becomes commonplace.
One possible crux: how do you feel about wireheading? If everyone can have these wonderful lives, but only because of electrical stimulation in their brain to make them experience it without any effect on the “real world”, is it still a utopia?
Not OP, but I’m personally fine with wireheading when it’s framed in the right way. For instance, replace the idea of taking a drug or getting wires stuck in your head with the more spiritual sounding “achieving nirvana/transcendence”. For me, I’d absolutely press a button to give myself nirvana!
My take on wire heading is that I precommit to live in the world which is more detailed and complex (vs more pleasant).
For example, online world of Instagram or heroine addiction is more pleasant, but not complex. Painfully navigating maze of life with its ups and downs is complex, but not always pleasant. Living in a “Matrix” might be pleasant, but essentially the details are missed out because the systems that created these details are essentially more detailed and live in a more detailed world.
On the same note, if 99% of the Earth population “uploads”, and most of the fun stuff gonna happen “in the matrix”, most of the complexity gonna exist there. And even if 1% of contrarians stay outside, their lives might not be as interesting and detailed. So “going out of the matrix” would actually be “running away from reality” in that example.
With wire heading it’s a similar thing. From what I know, actually “nirvana” is a more detailed experience where you notice more and where you can observe subconscious processes directly; that’s why they don’t own you and you become free from “suffering”. Nirvana is not total bliss, from what they say (like heroine, I presume).
So yeah I would choose this kind of wire heading that allows me to switch into nirvana. Shinzen Young actually works on research trying to accomplish this even before AGI.
it seems … boring. I strongly value overcoming difficult challenges and having a positive impact on my fellow humans. This makes me uninterested in an easy, static, always-equally-pleasant existence.
I agree that a good world must have challenges and ways to positively impact others. (And I’d guess that OP does too and plans to address that later in this series.) However those challenges do NOT need to include many of the awful ones we face today. For example, while I hope that folks fighting malaria today are able to derive some pleasure from the challenge and the positive impact they’re having, I much more strongly hope that every one of them would push a button to eradicate malaria if such a button appeared, even though that source of challenge/impact-pleasure would thereby be destroyed. The main thing OP seems to be saying is that he’d press a large number of these buttons (for diseases, resource-shortages, etc); we can disagree on the precise point at which one should stop pressing buttons, but the overall idea seems sound. And if OP’s later posts do not convince you that such a world could still have plenty of challenge/impact sources, ping me and I will go track down a handful of my favorite stories which explore such a setting.
Yeah, I think it’s somewhat boring without without more. Solving the current problems seems very desirable to me, very good, and also really not complete / compelling / interesting. That’s why I’m intending to try to get at in part II. I think it’s the harder part.
Aside from reachability or questions of malthusian repugnance (how many people can have this life, and should we make it slightly less pleasant to have more people experience it), I’m not very compelled by this story, because it seems … boring.
I don’t know if it’s universally human, or just particular to me, but I strongly value overcoming difficult challenges and having a positive impact on my fellow humans. This makes me uninterested in an easy, static, always-equally-pleasant existence. Sure, this should be available for those who want it, perhaps even for a few thousand years of their very long subjective lives. But there’s not a lot of meaning or interest to it overall, and I don’t see how it’ll remain satisfying once it becomes commonplace.
One possible crux: how do you feel about wireheading? If everyone can have these wonderful lives, but only because of electrical stimulation in their brain to make them experience it without any effect on the “real world”, is it still a utopia?
Not OP, but I’m personally fine with wireheading when it’s framed in the right way. For instance, replace the idea of taking a drug or getting wires stuck in your head with the more spiritual sounding “achieving nirvana/transcendence”. For me, I’d absolutely press a button to give myself nirvana!
My take on wire heading is that I precommit to live in the world which is more detailed and complex (vs more pleasant).
For example, online world of Instagram or heroine addiction is more pleasant, but not complex. Painfully navigating maze of life with its ups and downs is complex, but not always pleasant. Living in a “Matrix” might be pleasant, but essentially the details are missed out because the systems that created these details are essentially more detailed and live in a more detailed world.
On the same note, if 99% of the Earth population “uploads”, and most of the fun stuff gonna happen “in the matrix”, most of the complexity gonna exist there. And even if 1% of contrarians stay outside, their lives might not be as interesting and detailed. So “going out of the matrix” would actually be “running away from reality” in that example.
With wire heading it’s a similar thing. From what I know, actually “nirvana” is a more detailed experience where you notice more and where you can observe subconscious processes directly; that’s why they don’t own you and you become free from “suffering”. Nirvana is not total bliss, from what they say (like heroine, I presume).
(e.g. see discussion on topic of paradises on Qualia Computing between Andres Gomez and Roger Thisdell: https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/11/23/the-supreme-state-unconsciousness-classical-enlightenment-from-the-point-of-view-of-valence-structuralism/)
So yeah I would choose this kind of wire heading that allows me to switch into nirvana. Shinzen Young actually works on research trying to accomplish this even before AGI.
I agree that a good world must have challenges and ways to positively impact others. (And I’d guess that OP does too and plans to address that later in this series.) However those challenges do NOT need to include many of the awful ones we face today. For example, while I hope that folks fighting malaria today are able to derive some pleasure from the challenge and the positive impact they’re having, I much more strongly hope that every one of them would push a button to eradicate malaria if such a button appeared, even though that source of challenge/impact-pleasure would thereby be destroyed. The main thing OP seems to be saying is that he’d press a large number of these buttons (for diseases, resource-shortages, etc); we can disagree on the precise point at which one should stop pressing buttons, but the overall idea seems sound. And if OP’s later posts do not convince you that such a world could still have plenty of challenge/impact sources, ping me and I will go track down a handful of my favorite stories which explore such a setting.
Yeah, I think it’s somewhat boring without without more. Solving the current problems seems very desirable to me, very good, and also really not complete / compelling / interesting. That’s why I’m intending to try to get at in part II. I think it’s the harder part.