#wireheading

[spilledreality]

Q: If wireheading is such a pernicious problem of intelligence, alignment, and mesa-optimizers, why don't we see more of it in the natural world?

A: Anyone who wireheads successfully is extinct along with his potential lineage.

[pervocracy]

So are you coming out in favour of wireheading? Put the whole species into life-support pods, jam electrodes into the pleasure centres and perma-orgasm everyone forever? Because... *distant screaming*

See, I think that would be great!  Not with current brain stimulation technology, because it doesn’t provide truly ideal pleasure and there’s some controversy over how much it’s actually pleasurable versus just addictive, but with imaginary future technology, sure!

The thing is, I think you’re thinking small talking about “perma-orgasm.”  That sounds like it would get exhausting and sort of gross after the first few hours.  But what if the wires could provide you with a rotating array of the best sensations in the universe--feelings equivalent to:

The awe of seeing the Aurora Borealis for the first time

The joy of snuggling with a happy friendly puppy

The excitement of playing Laser Tag in zero G and your teammates are velociraptors

The pride of receiving a Nobel Peace Prize which you have fully earned

And so forth, and all with time-dilation so it feels like you’re experiencing all those joys for years in every second.  It’s so much more than orgasm.  Is it all fake?  Nope, you’re really feeling it!  I think it’s hard to intuitively understand and accept that from the perspective of never experiencing such a thing, but in the sci-fi ideal, the machines wouldn’t produce a shallow simulation of such emotions, they’d produce them exactly.  I think experiencing that for eternity would be pretty darn neat.

[up8photographer]

😵‍💫 Targeted ultrasound can shape the brain's reward-seeking mechanisms

Targeted ultrasound can shape the brain's reward-seeking mechanisms

The nucleus accumbens is a tiny element of the human brain triggered when we experience something enjoyable, and used to help us learn behav

[steampunkforever]

*plasters a TENS unit on the back of my neck and begins to wirehead solely on the placebo effect*

[pervocracy]

If that sounds awesome to you that's great and I support a world where people like you can have that. But that is not what I want, and I want people like me to exist too, and not have that happen to them when they don't want, and not be erased or destroyed to make more some-other people.

This is all incredibly theoretical, maybe impossible, and not something I’d actually support in any reality even vaguely resembling the current world.

You sound somewhat genuinely distressed about this, and I want to reassure you that I’m not really serious here.  I wouldn’t be nearly so confident if this existed in real life; I just approve of it on a vague fuck-aroundy “would you rather be Batman or a dinosaur” level.

[rareandradiant-maiden]

does anyone know of any academic sources discussing wireheading?

if not i am going to be full-on citing the lesswrong wiki in my first ethics assessment of my university career and i hope you as a community can preserve me from that

[rangi42]

So lookee here (or here, for popsci coverage). Researchers out of the University of Virginia have successfully controlled behavior in mice—possibly instilled True Happiness, although it’s impossible to be sure about another being’s inner emotional state—using controlled magnetic fields. By hacking into the reward centers of the rodent brain they induced the little guys to assemble on command, drew them to any spot where critical lines of force brought down the rapture.

@wirehead-wannabe

[tropylium]

Speaking of counterarguments against wireheading BTW, one that’s a bit more contrived but which I still don’t think I’ve seen often enough (never in fact) is a cosmological one.

First suppose we grant the assumptions that yes, linear-scale utilitarianism is the only correct ethical stance, and yes, a universe made of computronic wireheaded simulated beings is the state of our universe yielding the greatest amount of utility per second per cubic meter. Does this mean we cannot argue for anything other than creating this state of affairs ASAP?

It does not: according to our current knowledge, eternal wireheading is not possible. The world has finite amounts of negentropy to spare, and we’re going to run out eventually.

Physics, however, continues to not be solved. Dedicating resources to research will likely allow us get more mileage out of our material universe. And, most interestingly, we cannot yet tell if this will eventually be a completed project. Perhaps we will keep making incremental progress to proceed arbitrarily high. Perhaps this even requires keeping all available people around as contributing members of a flourishing society, not boxed away as wireheads.

Even if we were to, at some point, to discover a truly infinite source of energy? Nope, still not done. Do we have sufficient reason to believe that time is merely alef-zero infinite? Do we have sufficient reason to believe that our new infinite providence cannot be stretched further? What if we could reap an alef-one amount of utility somehow? Who knows, maybe even alef-two! Let’s do an infinite amount of research, if necessary, and find out! And so on forth……