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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2016-06-15 01:33, William Flynn
Wallace wrote:<br>
</div>
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cite="mid:CAO+xQEaeOE9D71JbF5-SsHNegfU9pPwuZJbo588a3zEYqrUCvA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<div dir="ltr"><span
style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">anders,
as a consequentialist, I think you must argue that pain never
remembered and never causing any future harm is not per se
wrong. In fact, pain now can mean learning to avoid dangerous
things and so is a good thing. </span></div>
</blockquote>
Note that "remembering" can be several things. I can have an
episodic memory of being in great pain, I can have a semantic memory
that I was in pain, or I could have an emotional trigger that causes
conditioned change in behavior/habit due to the pain. The last one
can make me avoid dangerous things even when I lack the first two. <br>
<br>
Pain with no effects whatsoever only has the instantaneous disvalue,
which might still be a bad thing. Imagine a server farm running
emulated minds in agony in a loop. The world would be better if it
is stopped, even if the external output (heat and noise) was the
same. <br>
<br>
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cite="mid:CAO+xQEaeOE9D71JbF5-SsHNegfU9pPwuZJbo588a3zEYqrUCvA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><span
style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"></span><span
style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Now
this may be more debatable: should a person be subjected to
capricious pain and humiliation just because it has always
been done that way? I am thinking of fraternity initiations.
I experienced it directly. When the national organization of
lambda chi came down with instructions to eliminate hazing,
some ot the brothers objected strongly. They thought that if
the new group did not go through what they went through that
they were not fully brothers in the frat. I have seen
informal initiations and they were at times vicious. <br>
</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Cognitive dissonance, I suppose. By adding a threshold and a cost to
membership people upvalue it, plus presumably they feel a link to
previous generations. <br>
<br>
Sometimes that can be useful for making a desirable institution
stable. But the value of that stability better far outweigh the
disvalue of pain and humiliation.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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