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Well, I was being sort of sarcastic about it. Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time, although not-pleasure (or pain) is on

Well, I was being sort of sarcastic about it. Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time, although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few guaranteed things in life. Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable, because of our mortality. Still, we want pleasure and not-pain and if possible - greater pleasure over "just pleasure", since, well, it's more scarce. > do you see yourself as nothing more dignified than a pet or a slave If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess being a pet is much nicer and desirable. I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant. And I think in the end, this is the metaphor for "A brave new world" and "1984" - A society of pets vs a society of farmed animals. Make your pick.

PavlovsCat 10y ago
> Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time, although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few guaranteed things in life. Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable, because of our mortality. No parents would want their child to die, but if you offered grieving parents some happy drugs that made them forget they ever had a child, do you really think most would take them? Would you? If someone offered you a drug that killed you, but somehow subjectively made it feel like a million years of bliss, would you take it? Sure, you'd make the people who love you sad, but you wouldn't notice that anymore, so why not, wouldn't that be the most efficient thing you could ever do in your life? Pleasure is something that I generate in myself. Based on stimuli, sure, but those stimuli are not the pleasure. And I think it's not a stretch to say that pleasure and pain exist for reasons (I know it can go wrong in all sorts of ways, that there's plenty of pointless and chronical pain, but let's ignore that for the sake of simplicity). Pain warns of things that harm us, pleasure does the opposite, but this can be "hacked" and abused in all sorts of ways. Comparing it to the feeling of hunger, you could take drugs that make you not feel hunger and pain, then you'd simply starve happily, rather than also getting what "not feeling hungry" is supposed to mean. And I think the same would happen to people held as pets: yes, their bodies would still exist, they'd "be happy", but they would cease to exist as the person that happiness and pain as once a tool and advisor for. As they say, the lights are on, but there's nobody home. (In my hearts of hearts, I believe this may have long since happened, and that we might be the afterbirth of an afterbirth of an afterbirth of an abortion. But if that is true, I can't lose anything valuable by not giving up that I haven't lost already, and if it's not so, I could make it so by believing it, making it self-fulfilling prophecy.) When you see, say, a religious fanatic or deranged person, who really believes in whatever floats their boat, and is happy 24/7, would you envy them? Or would you shudder? Wouldn't you at least think "I wish I was that happy, but not at that price"? > If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess being a pet is much nicer and desirable. Well, if. But those are not the only choices you have, and I'd even say being a pet is a choice you might never have. From you having a cat doesn't follow that you being the pet of someone will be an option for you. You're not your cat and your overlords are not you. Who would keep you as a pet? The people who sleep well while people starve? People who use fears and love to bring about more of the things people fear and destroy more of what they love? Machines ordered to be made by the same? Why would they, and what for? I'm sure you're a great person and all, but what makes you think you'd not rather be used as prey in hunting games, until more challenging prey is made? What makes and billions of other people so great that a few thousand square miles of private golf course or jungle wouldn't be more interesting? When cars were invented, we didn't keep all the horses around to love and cuddle. Where's the children of the horses your grandgrandgrandparents owned? What's that, you never even thought about that? Welcome to your own role in the sight of your "overlords" :P How are we treating the vulnerable so far? Last time I checked, every few seconds a child dies of thirst. And that's just one thing in a long list. So at what point would the drive for MORE power lead to LESS suffering, instead of more, as it does until now? Can you at least see how that might come across as a little kool-aid-ish, to believe it will suddenly change because that would be nicer? It would also be nice for the millions of people who suffer currently, but if they don't matter now, they won't matter then. > I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant. So you're thinking the cat is your pet, instead of the other way around? :) But more importantly, you're a human, whatever turns you into a pet will be made by humans. As Erich Fromm wrote: > The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old Testament: "Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do not hear," etc. The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in which the idol has a so-called religious meaning. Idolatry is always the worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act. The only way that "overlord" can be "omnipotent" to you is by either lying to you, or by keeping you in check. (Why am I suddenly thinking of gardens and forbidden fruit? ^^) I had two cats, they were happy because they had a nice place to stay, food, humans who loved them, and each other.. any powers of mine beyond that they had no use for or interest in. A cat living on a farm catching its own food is also happy, no "omnipotence" required. And we are, right now, sitting in the warm, gentle lap of the sun. We could be purring, too. The same motives that keep that from realizing now, will likely still be around when the technology is there to completely control everybody and everything. And I suspect that won't be for the purpose of making us happy as we are, but to either make us fit or make us gone. That is, everything else being the same, namely as it currently is and how it trends. I don't know the future but I know my contemporaries. So my pick would be kicking Big Brother in the dick, flirting with his sister and singing loudly as they drag me to the guillotine.
- justsaysmthng 10y ago
  Thanks for your thoughts, stranger. My comments are a reflection on the outside world. My own philosophy is very different. Our (western) society is built on the premise of avoiding pain at all costs - even if it means exporting it to other countries or species. That's why I'm saying that people will choose pleasure over pain - not just because it's convenient, but because we're constantly conditioned to do that - take the pill, pain will go away. So I agree with Huxley - a society based on offering unlimited pleasure is even more insidious than a totalitarian state based on violence described in 1984. At least in a totalitarian state you can rebel... --- The idea about the horses really took me by surprise - I haven't thought about that. -- My personal belief is that "rebirth" is only possible by passing through the gates of suffering. By "rebirth" I mean "new, changed, evolved self" , rather then physical reincarnation. Suffering is a necessary ingredient for stepping onto the next level of understanding. So I respect it and I accept it when it's unavoidable, although it's never easy. There's the idea that "suffering and pain" are what makes us "feel alive", but if examined under a microscope, then the following can be observed: Life is the process of expending energy in order to avoid suffering and pain and optionally experience "pleasure". To drift even further, I'd note that True human-like "AI" will only be possible when the concepts of pain, suffering and pleasure and love are somehow implemented into the AI's "brain".. But to do that we'll have to somehow convince it that it's mortal.

PavlovsCat 10y ago

> Fact is, the vast majority of people prefer pleasure over pain .. all time, although not-pleasure (or pain) is one of the few guaranteed things in life. Pleasure is optional, pain and suffering are guaranteed and unavoidable, because of our mortality. No parents would want their child to die, but if you offered grieving parents some happy drugs that made them forget they ever had a child, do you really think most would take them? Would you? If someone offered you a drug that killed you, but somehow subjectively made it feel like a million years of bliss, would you take it? Sure, you'd make the people who love you sad, but you wouldn't notice that anymore, so why not, wouldn't that be the most efficient thing you could ever do in your life? Pleasure is something that I generate in myself. Based on stimuli, sure, but those stimuli are not the pleasure. And I think it's not a stretch to say that pleasure and pain exist for reasons (I know it can go wrong in all sorts of ways, that there's plenty of pointless and chronical pain, but let's ignore that for the sake of simplicity). Pain warns of things that harm us, pleasure does the opposite, but this can be "hacked" and abused in all sorts of ways. Comparing it to the feeling of hunger, you could take drugs that make you not feel hunger and pain, then you'd simply starve happily, rather than also getting what "not feeling hungry" is supposed to mean. And I think the same would happen to people held as pets: yes, their bodies would still exist, they'd "be happy", but they would cease to exist as the person that happiness and pain as once a tool and advisor for. As they say, the lights are on, but there's nobody home. (In my hearts of hearts, I believe this may have long since happened, and that we might be the afterbirth of an afterbirth of an afterbirth of an abortion. But if that is true, I can't lose anything valuable by not giving up that I haven't lost already, and if it's not so, I could make it so by believing it, making it self-fulfilling prophecy.) When you see, say, a religious fanatic or deranged person, who really believes in whatever floats their boat, and is happy 24/7, would you envy them? Or would you shudder? Wouldn't you at least think "I wish I was that happy, but not at that price"? > If there's a choice between being a pet and a factory farm animal, I guess being a pet is much nicer and desirable. Well, if. But those are not the only choices you have, and I'd even say being a pet is a choice you might never have. From you having a cat doesn't follow that you being the pet of someone will be an option for you. You're not your cat and your overlords are not you. Who would keep you as a pet? The people who sleep well while people starve? People who use fears and love to bring about more of the things people fear and destroy more of what they love? Machines ordered to be made by the same? Why would they, and what for? I'm sure you're a great person and all, but what makes you think you'd not rather be used as prey in hunting games, until more challenging prey is made? What makes and billions of other people so great that a few thousand square miles of private golf course or jungle wouldn't be more interesting? When cars were invented, we didn't keep all the horses around to love and cuddle. Where's the children of the horses your grandgrandgrandparents owned? What's that, you never even thought about that? Welcome to your own role in the sight of your "overlords" :P How are we treating the vulnerable so far? Last time I checked, every few seconds a child dies of thirst. And that's just one thing in a long list. So at what point would the drive for MORE power lead to LESS suffering, instead of more, as it does until now? Can you at least see how that might come across as a little kool-aid-ish, to believe it will suddenly change because that would be nicer? It would also be nice for the millions of people who suffer currently, but if they don't matter now, they won't matter then. > I say this while my cat is purring ecstatically on my lap. Not bad to be loved and cared for by a omnipotent giant. So you're thinking the cat is your pet, instead of the other way around? :) But more importantly, you're a human, whatever turns you into a pet will be made by humans. As Erich Fromm wrote: > The whole concept of alienation found its first expression in Western thought in the Old Testament concept of idolatry. The essence of what the prophets call "idolatry" is not that man worships many gods instead of only one. It is that the idols are the work of man's own hands -- they are things, and man bows down and worships things; worships that which he has created himself. In doing so he transforms himself into a thing. He transfers to the things of his creation the attributes of his own life, and instead of experiencing himself as the creating person, he is in touch with himself only by the worship of the idol. He has become estranged from his own life forces, from the wealth of his own potentialities, and is in touch with himself only in the indirect way of submission to life frozen in the idols. The deadness and emptiness of the idol is expressed in the Old Testament: "Eyes they have and they do not see, ears they have and they do not hear," etc. The more man transfers his own powers to the idols, the poorer he himself becomes, and the more dependent on the idols, so that they permit him to redeem a small part of what was originally his. The idols can be a godlike figure, the state, the church, a person, possessions. Idolatry changes its objects; it is by no means to be found only in those forms in which the idol has a so-called religious meaning. Idolatry is always the worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act. The only way that "overlord" can be "omnipotent" to you is by either lying to you, or by keeping you in check. (Why am I suddenly thinking of gardens and forbidden fruit? ^^) I had two cats, they were happy because they had a nice place to stay, food, humans who loved them, and each other.. any powers of mine beyond that they had no use for or interest in. A cat living on a farm catching its own food is also happy, no "omnipotence" required. And we are, right now, sitting in the warm, gentle lap of the sun. We could be purring, too. The same motives that keep that from realizing now, will likely still be around when the technology is there to completely control everybody and everything. And I suspect that won't be for the purpose of making us happy as we are, but to either make us fit or make us gone. That is, everything else being the same, namely as it currently is and how it trends. I don't know the future but I know my contemporaries. So my pick would be kicking Big Brother in the dick, flirting with his sister and singing loudly as they drag me to the guillotine.

justsaysmthng 10y ago
Thanks for your thoughts, stranger. My comments are a reflection on the outside world. My own philosophy is very different. Our (western) society is built on the premise of avoiding pain at all costs - even if it means exporting it to other countries or species. That's why I'm saying that people will choose pleasure over pain - not just because it's convenient, but because we're constantly conditioned to do that - take the pill, pain will go away. So I agree with Huxley - a society based on offering unlimited pleasure is even more insidious than a totalitarian state based on violence described in 1984. At least in a totalitarian state you can rebel... --- The idea about the horses really took me by surprise - I haven't thought about that. -- My personal belief is that "rebirth" is only possible by passing through the gates of suffering. By "rebirth" I mean "new, changed, evolved self" , rather then physical reincarnation. Suffering is a necessary ingredient for stepping onto the next level of understanding. So I respect it and I accept it when it's unavoidable, although it's never easy. There's the idea that "suffering and pain" are what makes us "feel alive", but if examined under a microscope, then the following can be observed: Life is the process of expending energy in order to avoid suffering and pain and optionally experience "pleasure". To drift even further, I'd note that True human-like "AI" will only be possible when the concepts of pain, suffering and pleasure and love are somehow implemented into the AI's "brain".. But to do that we'll have to somehow convince it that it's mortal.