[ExI] Fermi Paradox and Volvo star systems

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 31 Mar 2020 at 07:41, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> >> Why would they do that? The chief pleasure of many extroverts in
>> talking with people and sharing ideas and so on.
>>
>
> But if somebody had total control of their emotional control panel then
> they could change that so their chief pleasure would come from whatever
> they wanted it to come from.  John
>
> From what I read, solitary confinement is truly a horrible form of
> punishment.   Some people go bats after just a few days.  There is
> something very basic about being around other people  Way back in history
> being kicked out of a tribe was the worst punishment possible.  The victim
> usually tried to get into another one rather than live alone, which would
> have been a very spare life at that.
>
> I don't know if the mind is totally changeable.  I suspect it isn't.  On
> Quora I find a lot of questions about changing one's self, one's habits.
> The reason is that they are difficult to very difficult to accomplish.  In
> uploads it might be easy, but if I liked sour cream blueberry pie, which is
> in the oven as we speak, why would I want to change that?  If I were an
> introvert upload and wanted to change to extrovert, I could, but why would
> I?  I am comfortable with what I have.
>

It is indeed difficult to literally change your mind. We have psychotherapy
and drugs, which can help, but are quite crude. But imagine that everyone
could change mental attributes such as personality, motivations, likes and
dislikes as easily as we can change our clothes. What sort of people would
we be? I think that most people’s ideal version of themselves is better
than the actual version, so the ability to attain it would result in a
better society.

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
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