From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jul 13 2003 - 22:03:02 MDT
Robin Hanson wrote:
>
> The question was about the choice between power/status and doing good
> for the tribe. We have been assuming that typically when faced with
> this choice people fool themselves into thinking they are actually
> doing good for the tribe. We have been asking if this is what they
> "really want", and I proposed considering two standard ways to define
> what we "want." I claim that people are happier in the situations
> where they get power/status, relative to the situations where the tribe
> has been done good to, in part because they can fool themselves into
> thinking they are doing good by getting power/status.
This sounds to me like it presumes a form of psychological hedonism. Who
says that what *does in fact* make people happier, that is, which physical
events will in fact put their brains into a state bearing happiness, is
the metric of what they really want right now? Right now I really don't
want to be wireheaded. Similarly, I suspect that many people (including
me) would say that even if power/status would in fact make them happier,
the right thing to do would still be to do good for the tribe. In fact,
you can openly acknowledge this as a fact about yourself and the things
that make you happy, and still be a psychological altruist who chooses to
act for the good of the tribe.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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