revisiting axioms
i have been thinking about this stuff a bit recently, and it was going back to reread this story on a whim that let these thoughts begin to solidify.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/
really go read this. it's the most satisfying and interesting story i've read in a long time. i also recommend you let your thoughts conclude themselves before reading on.
"I am kiritsugu," said the Lady 3rd. "In the early days of my species there were those who refrained from happiness in order to achieve perfect skill in helping others, using untranslatable 3 to suppress their emotions and acting only on their abstract knowledge of goals. These were forcibly returned to normality by massive untranslatable 4. But I descend from their thought-lineage and in emergency invoke the shadow of their untranslatable 5."
This is one of the most interesting fragments of the whole story. The superhappies put happiness as their single important goal. But they also want to travel the universe to spread their ideals to all other life, or the job isn't completed yet. So some of them saw it was necessary to forgo happiness as a pragmatic approach (what is done when things are less than perfect) so they could, say, build spaceships successfully. And the story shows what happens when they make contact: it turns out their living wasn't perfect in all regards after all.
I used to assert that the point of life was to be as happy as possible. But with a useful definition of happiness (namely, that particular joyful flow of chemicals through the brain), it's becoming apparent that there are other things to shoot for (presumably part of evolution's design of our emotion factories) - solving interesting problems and having an impact on the people around me in present and future both yield satisfactions that are different from contentedness and euphoria. And of course all of those make achieving the others easier.
So back up a bit, and consider what's the most basic axiom we have: survival. (as facilitated by evolution.) But that doesn't yield a very interesting existence; plants go for survival too. As sentient life, we added extra principles to make our existence more interesting, more useful (though those terms have to be defined in terms of the new principles), just like how logical systems have to be richer and more complicated in order to be able to do anything useful with them.
To conclude the literary analysis: The reason "should the humans let the superhappies assimilate them?" is such a dilemma is because the superhappy approach to life shows a little window of what a completely perfect life is like. This is tempting, but as it is, our existence (and the superhappies' as well, as evidenced) is not perfect enough to make this a viable strategy. Furthermore it's also a flawed window for our axiom set, as it fails to take into account the other "good feelings" we get. We have inherently good sensations when we feel relief, for which it's necessary to alleviate pain. So when they offer to bring a fleet of ships to alleviate a child's stubbed toe by hitting the kid with the transhumanism beam, that's comparable to monologuing about the implementation of a kernel to somebody who's trying to figure out how to write mutual exclusion locks.
some people call this sort of thinking 'philosophy', but that doesn't seem to fit quite right. i haven't really got words for it.
EDIT: today's smbc is somewhat relevant. for example, i would deem the life of a child for granting faster-than-light travel to humankind a worthwhile exchange.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/
really go read this. it's the most satisfying and interesting story i've read in a long time. i also recommend you let your thoughts conclude themselves before reading on.
"I am kiritsugu," said the Lady 3rd. "In the early days of my species there were those who refrained from happiness in order to achieve perfect skill in helping others, using untranslatable 3 to suppress their emotions and acting only on their abstract knowledge of goals. These were forcibly returned to normality by massive untranslatable 4. But I descend from their thought-lineage and in emergency invoke the shadow of their untranslatable 5."
This is one of the most interesting fragments of the whole story. The superhappies put happiness as their single important goal. But they also want to travel the universe to spread their ideals to all other life, or the job isn't completed yet. So some of them saw it was necessary to forgo happiness as a pragmatic approach (what is done when things are less than perfect) so they could, say, build spaceships successfully. And the story shows what happens when they make contact: it turns out their living wasn't perfect in all regards after all.
I used to assert that the point of life was to be as happy as possible. But with a useful definition of happiness (namely, that particular joyful flow of chemicals through the brain), it's becoming apparent that there are other things to shoot for (presumably part of evolution's design of our emotion factories) - solving interesting problems and having an impact on the people around me in present and future both yield satisfactions that are different from contentedness and euphoria. And of course all of those make achieving the others easier.
So back up a bit, and consider what's the most basic axiom we have: survival. (as facilitated by evolution.) But that doesn't yield a very interesting existence; plants go for survival too. As sentient life, we added extra principles to make our existence more interesting, more useful (though those terms have to be defined in terms of the new principles), just like how logical systems have to be richer and more complicated in order to be able to do anything useful with them.
To conclude the literary analysis: The reason "should the humans let the superhappies assimilate them?" is such a dilemma is because the superhappy approach to life shows a little window of what a completely perfect life is like. This is tempting, but as it is, our existence (and the superhappies' as well, as evidenced) is not perfect enough to make this a viable strategy. Furthermore it's also a flawed window for our axiom set, as it fails to take into account the other "good feelings" we get. We have inherently good sensations when we feel relief, for which it's necessary to alleviate pain. So when they offer to bring a fleet of ships to alleviate a child's stubbed toe by hitting the kid with the transhumanism beam, that's comparable to monologuing about the implementation of a kernel to somebody who's trying to figure out how to write mutual exclusion locks.
some people call this sort of thinking 'philosophy', but that doesn't seem to fit quite right. i haven't really got words for it.
EDIT: today's smbc is somewhat relevant. for example, i would deem the life of a child for granting faster-than-light travel to humankind a worthwhile exchange.