[ExI] An old skeleton tumbles out of the list closet

[Dan]

On Monday, November 12, 2012 7:47 PM Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> I'm more of an Epicurean, myself. Stoics might have got the psychology
> part roughly right (it is interesting to compare it to findings in happiness
> studies), but they did not seem to have that much fun. I think we can have
> a far more hedonistic tranquillity.
>
> The problem with Stoicism and Epicureanism is that they still don't bind together
> people much. Sure, they are not against human fellowship, but it is not the
> main focus.

Continuing on the Rand riff, have you read "Epicurean Pleasure and the Objectivist Good" by Peter Saint-Andre? It's at: http://stpeter.im/writings/rand/epicurus.html

This doesn't really get into human fellowship. His earlier paper does a tiny bit: http://stpeter.im/writings/rand/apfloe.html That one, though, is more just straight forward Rand stuff and not Epicurus.

> Maybe the solution is just to tweak the social distance system with neurotech
> and artificially enlarge the empathic circle of concern to cover most of humanity.
> Some interesting free rider issues, but I suspect the reciprocal altruism network
> effects could outweigh those - and there are few things scarier than billions of
> caring people. Which of course shows the problem with this approach.

I imagine some of the free rider stuff might fall by the wayside simply because changing the neurotech will change the incentives for it. The thing I would fear, of course, is caring resulting in a total loss of autonomy, but I reckon that's the horror scenario and not the most likely outcome.

Regards,

Dan
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