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*Reflective Disequilibrium*: Are pain and pleasure equally energy-efficient?

reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com · 1,764 words · saved by 1 readers

Very nice post, Carl. I shall have to think about this some more. You're basically saying that the only two things that will matter to the overall calculation will be (1) maximally efficient torture and (2) maximally efficient enjoyment. Even if H=D, I think I still care more about D, as you hint in your last paragraph. Thus, I'm less interested to reduce extinction risks so that more computronium can be produced; I'm more anxious to ensure that the amount of torture that does take place is minimized. What would you recommend for someone with this aim? Yes, I want to distinguish between the empirical and structural properties on the one hand, and normative valuation on the other (although as noted in the post, I suspect that intuitions are skewed by our relative lack of experience with hedonium-intensity pleasures; as we have discussed elsewhere, this is reason to think that your fully informed self that had experienced both extreme pains and extreme pleasures would be less negative-

*Reflective Disequilibrium*: Are pain and pleasure equally energy-efficient? Saturday, March 24, 2012 Are pain and pleasure equally energy-efficient? Aggregative hedonistic utilitarians are often concerned with the expected value of pleasure minus pain going forward. For instance, they may wonder how to value the expected Astronomical Waste if humanity were rendered extinct by a sudden asteroid impact. One important consideration is that it appears that biological life as we know it generates pain or pleasure at a very low density relative to long-term technological possibilities. As Nick Bost

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