Thought experiment: The transhuman pedophile — LessWrong
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Comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky - I may never actually use this in a story, but in another universe I had thought of having a character mention that... call it the forces of magic with normative dimension... had evaluated one pedophile who had known his desires were harmful to innocents and never acted upon them, while living a life of above-average virtue; and another pedophile who had acted on those desires, at harm to others. So the said forces of normatively dimensioned magic transformed the second pedophile's body into that of a little girl, delivered to the first pedophile along with the equivalent of an explanatory placard. Problem solved. And indeed the 'problem' as I had perceived it was, "What if a virtuous person deserving our aid wishes to retain their current sexual desires and not be frustrated thereby?" (As always, pedophilia is not the same as ephebophilia.) I also remark that the human equivalent of a utility function, not that we actually have one, often revolves around desires whose frustration produces pain. A vanilla rational agent (Bayes probabilities, expected utility max) would not see any need to change its utility function even if one of its components seemed highly probable though not absolutely certain to be eternally frustrated, since it would suffer no pain thereby.
  • acb@mastodon.social
    3·
    11 months ago

    As the old adage goes, a libertarian is someone who knows the price of everything, the value of nothing, and the age of consent in every jurisdiction

  • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    “Child sexual abuse is at the same time an appropriate reward for a virtuous person, and an appropriate punishment for an evil person.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky, our best hope for solving ethics

    edit: what the fuck is that thought experiment he’s responding to, even. are those terminal morons unquestioningly assuming a harmful and immoral fetish could validly be considered a “terminal value”? jesus christ

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        And also some unconscious ideas on what you should do with criminals. But im certain that Eliezer “master of noticing your biasses” Yudkowsky was fully aware of that. Right? Right!?

  • blakestacey@awful.systemsMEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Feynman had a story about trying to read somebody’s paper before a grand interdisciplinary symposium. As he told it, he couldn’t get through the jargon, until he stopped and tried to translate just one sentence. He landed on a line like, “The individual member of the social community often receives information through visual, symbolic channels.” And after a lot of crossing-out, he reduced that to “People read.”

    Yud, who idolizes Feynman above all others:

    I also remark that the human equivalent of a utility function, not that we actually have one, often revolves around desires whose frustration produces pain.

    Ah. People don’t like to hurt.

    • sinedpick@awful.systemsEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      More like “People want things and hurt if they don’t get them. Also, look at me saying things like utility function! Function is math! Math is smart. I am smart! Isn’t that so cool?”

  • self@awful.systemsMEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    holy fuck the number of people telling on themselves in that thread

    No, he terminally values being attracted to children. He could still assign a strongly negative value to actually having sex with children. Good fantasy, bad reality.

    So the said forces of normatively dimensioned magic transformed the second pedophile’s body into that of a little girl, delivered to the first pedophile along with the equivalent of an explanatory placard. Problem solved.

    please stop disguising your weird fucking sexual roleplay (at best, but let’s be honest, these weird fuckers need to imagine a world in which pedophilia is morally justified) as intellectual debate

    The problem is solved by pairing those who wish to live longer at personal cost to themselves with virtuous pedophiles. The pedophiles get to have consensual intercourse with children capable of giving informed consent, and people willing to get turned into a child and get molested by a pedophile in return for being younger get that.

    this one gets worse the longer you think about it! try it! there’s so much wrong!

    • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      it’s incredible how thin the pretense is. “I was just casually fantasizing about a scenario in which it would be justified to attack and molest a child” bruh. what

  • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    My personal belief is that most pedophiles can be put into two groups:

    Those developmentally stunted, who can’t see themselves as adults and therefore lust for people of their own ‘mental age’.

    And those who have a thing for power, and having an erection over controlling a minor, guiding them through everything and having full control over them.

    There may be a third option - these people who try hard to argue that pedophilia and ephebophilia aren’t the same thing, but I just write them off as idiots.