[extropy-chat] Hedonism? Why or why not? Was (John C. Wright finds god)

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Living for the pleasures of the moment is pretty
> close to
> how I think of hedonism anyway. Seems to me like
> *all* pleasures are experienced in the moment as are
> all pains, we can *anticipate* pleasures and speak
> of 
> "looking forward" to things and we can anticipate
> pain
> and be anxious about it, but anticipation of both
> takes
> place in the present. As does pride in
> accomplishment. 

Anticipation of pleasure is not the same as the
pleasure itself.  To equate them leads to confused,
paradoxical situations, as you have shown.

While we exist in the present moment, that moment is
not the sum total of our being.  We also have memories
of the past, and predictions about the future (based
in large part upon our memories of prediting the past
future, then seeing said predictions come true - or
not).

> A key thread for most transhumanists seems to be to 
> oppose the arbitrariness of three score and ten
> years
> or of a lifespan upperbounded at 120 but few
> transhumanists
> expect to avoid dying altogether, most recognize
> that an
> accident would get them sooner or later. 

Many recognize that even today, there is at least one
method that may offer revival after most forms of
death: cryonics.  Quite a few suspect that if they
survive long enough, advancing technology is likely to
provide other, even better options.  And more believe
that even if this does not happen, living a very very
long time and living forever are not - from the
present perspective in which they decide their current
actions and beliefs - all that different.

> That being the case, there are many other boundaries
> that 
> one could choose to oppose if opposing boundaries
> gets
> one's juices flowing.

Indeed.  But extending lifespan would give more time
to oppose many more of the rest during one's life, no?

> I wonder, I do not claim to
> know,
> if it might be just as valid if not more so to live
> more in
> the moments we know we have - the present ones. 

One can point to history and show *so* many examples
where people thought only of the present and not of
the future, and then lived to see a future whose
misery far outweighed what pleasure they did derive in
that moment, that I would take the negation of that
wonder as self-evident for all practical purposes.

> Why would mortals facing lifespans of seconds or of
> eons 
> EVER delay gratification? 

When the gratification is expected to be much greater
if delayed.  (For seconds, this is almost never the
case.  For eons, it probably will be the case from
time to time.)  Again, the expectation is not, itself,
the pleasure: one can have a very bad day, but if all
that mattered were the present then one might as well
cease experiencing the pain.  However, if one knows
that things will get better despite the current bad
times, that - while not pleasure - can be sufficient
motivation to pull through.

(Or, if you take an even more narrow view of the
"present moment": one's actions will not have any
effect until at least the next moment, therefore one's
actions are irrelevant to present pleasure and vice
versa.  Therefore, if hedonism is a philosophy/means
of determining actions whose only goal is to maximize
pleasure in the present moment, then hedonism is
either useless or impossible, since there is no way
short of time travel - which is not currently
available, and might never be - to alter pleasure or
anything else in the present moment as opposed to
moments in the - possibly near, possibly far -
future.)