A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “wireheading”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott explores three approaches to 'writing for AI' - teaching knowledge, influencing beliefs, and enabling simulation - finding the first limited, the second theoretically confused, and the third creepy and ethically troubling.
Scott Alexander reviews Nick Bostrom's 'Deep Utopia', which explores the concept of a technologically perfect utopia and discusses how to maintain meaning and purpose in such a world.
Scott Alexander reviews Robin Hanson's 'Age of Em', praising its creativity while critiquing its assumptions and arguing the future may be even stranger.
Scott argues for the importance of starting AI safety research now, presenting key problems and reasons why early work is crucial.
Scott compares two visions of a 'wirehead society' in the far future, exploring how framing affects our perception of technologically omnipotent posthuman existence.
Scott Alexander examines his doubts about utilitarianism and explores moral contractualism as a potential alternative for grounding morality.
A review of David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest', exploring its themes, structure, and critique of postmodern society through comparison with 'Illuminatus' and analysis of its complex narrative.
Scott explains why 'wanting' and 'liking' diverge by examining reinforcement learning mechanisms like context-dependence, intermittent reinforcement, and hyperbolic discounting, concluding that this undermines the concept of stable preferences.
Scott discusses the neuroscientific split between 'wanting' and 'liking', showing how wireheads might not actually be happy, and explores the troubling implications this has for economics, philosophy, and AI alignment.
Scott proposes that people don't just seek status itself, but rather seek mental states that allow them to believe they have status, explaining why people adopt low-status beliefs like conspiracy theories.