On Sun, Sep 6, 2026 at 8:38 AM Matt Mahoney <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 5, 2026, 6:13 PM WriterOfMinds <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Deactivating your amygdala so you can't feel bad about anything is akin >> to using mind-altering drugs to make yourself feel good about everything. >> They're both forms of wireheading. Some of us are not naive reinforcement >> learners and won't fall in that trap. >> I'd say technological civilization is what Matt refers to when he obsessively uses the word "We" and that technological civilization, in O'Neill's terms (hence Bezos's "Maui on its best day" terms regarding O'Neill space habitats) is a manifestation of said "wireheading". E. O. Wilson pretty well summed it up in "The Social Conquest of Earth" when he described eusociality as parasitic castration of children to produce sterile workers. Amygdalectomy is akin to castration to produce "angelic" sterile workers in a eusocial hive. This was the point of the Soviet era novel "We" that the Soviets suppressed. But it also explains the amazing phenomena of mothers parading their moral vanity by declaring their newborns as "trans" and the equally amazing phenomena of many in the Democratic Party supporting government funded "transitioning" of infants. In "The Genetic Omnidominance Hypothesis" I described this kind of thing (including amygdala "castration" decades before it became a *ahem* popular suggestion) as an extended phenotype of genetic dominant traits silencing genes in other humans during global panmixia of populations. Matt is describing humans as robots -- which is exactly what sterile workers are as described by E. O. Wilson. A more evocative term is "slaves" of the genetically omnidominant. Slaves freak out about this hypothesis not because of minor flaws in its exposition that they point to, but because it violates the genetic interests of their masters. ... But all possible utility functions in a finite universe have a maximum > state, which is death. > This is the crux of Matt's argument and it would be good to deconstruct it precisely before further palaver. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T906c878e4ba411be-M91c3f558fe7b7cbbdaddbe05 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
