From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat May 31 2003 - 15:06:42 MDT
Rafal writes
> > To place myself in a parallel situation, suppose that Lee has
> > two hours free at some particular time T in which to watch a
> > great movie. Even better, there are two movies A and B that
> > would be almost equally pleasurable to watch. Well, what I
> > would do, of course, (being a totalist) is make a copy of
> > myself for the interval of time (T, T+2hrs) and watch both
> > movies. (We are not talking about any events subsequent to
> > T+2hrs, and I hope that no one is distracted by such considerations.)
> > Why shouldn't I get to watch both movies, and enjoy both, and
> > why isn't this the best course of action for one?
> >
> ### You are pointing to a very important feature of human motivation
> system - non-linearity.
I'm not sure what you mean by the term "non-linear", although
I do give a guess below. Correct me if it's wrong.
> Both the averagist and totalist positions are crude approximations of our
> largely inborn motivational hardware. In real life we have a very strong
> negative response to a set of evolutionarily specified stimuli, or a certain
> level of resources available to us - insufficient nutrition, physical pain,
> and other signals of near-term danger are weighted much more heavily in our
> decisions than time-discounted signals of danger, or, on the other hand,
> signals of available opportunity.
All right. So this is what you mean by "non-linearity": Intuitively,
a small change in the stimulus results in an unexpectedly large change
in the response---unexpected, that is, because as we've been plotting
or following the result, and we in our extrapolations are surprised by
the intensity of the response. That is what you mean, isn't it?
> Our avoidance system is *not* the same as our pursuit system
> (neurologically exemplified by, but not limited to, the amygdala
> vs. nucleus accumbens).
That makes sense and seems reasonable.
> This is why most of us will not leave our copy in Hell (averagism),
Yes, but of course, totalists won't either (not that you
have said they would in so many words). We totalists
would look upon the copy in hell as pulling the total
happiness, satisfaction, joy, contentment, etc., down.
And the averagists, in this case, come to the same
conclusion.
Now a devout totalist, like myself, will assign a few
copies to hell provided that an even greater number get
to go to heaven. I can do this because logically I can
force myself to suppose that the benefits of the heaven
are so unimaginably great that they can more than out-
weigh the easily imagined torments of hell.
> but would consider leaving a copy in a second-rate heaven (totalism),
> especially if the copy still has the chance to improve its lot.
> Since there are interindividual variations in empathy, and time-
> discounting of rewards, there will be many versions of ethics, such as
> the threaded ethics, and hardly any pure totalists or pure averagists.
Why do you think that there are few "pure totalists". How do
I know if I qualify?
> I am a non-linear totalist-volitionist, BTW.
Well, if you would define that a little more clearly (perhaps I
missed some threads), then perhaps we would agree for once ;-)
Lee
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