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| - One of the commonest reactions to "Three Worlds Collide" is, "Wait, I thought the 'Normal Ending' was better than the 'True Ending'!" What makes this surprising, rather than simple Values Dissonance, is that Eliezer Yudkowsky is generally considered a good writer, and yet the authorial intent of the story is undermined if the former is more compelling than the latter. Why does the story fail in this fashion for a large contingent of readers? And reading the story, we find that this is actually the more compelling of the two reasons to at least one protagonist at the conclusion of Part 7:
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| abstract
| - One of the commonest reactions to "Three Worlds Collide" is, "Wait, I thought the 'Normal Ending' was better than the 'True Ending'!" What makes this surprising, rather than simple Values Dissonance, is that Eliezer Yudkowsky is generally considered a good writer, and yet the authorial intent of the story is undermined if the former is more compelling than the latter. Why does the story fail in this fashion for a large contingent of readers? Let me briefly state the principal question facing the crew of the Impossible Possible World. There is an alien species, significantly more powerful than humanity, which has expressed an intent to alter humanity on a fundamental level. I will quote the relevant section: There are two obvious objections to this plan from a human standpoint. The more obvious one is that infanticide-via-cannibalism is widely considered to be nasty business -- so much so that it's a trope. The less obvious one is stated earlier, in a conversation between Akon and the Confessor: There is a name for a life entirely free of pain and sorrow and full of simple pleasure: it's called "wireheading". It's so-called because there have been experiments performed with animals, where electrodes were attached to certain parts of their brains and these parts were activated. One specific story comes to mind: of a population of rats given a pedal which would stimulate this part of their brain whenever they pressed it. These rats would do so until they died. Pretty pathetic, isn't it? Sure, the wirehead might have more pleasure on average than the ordinary -- but quite a few human beings wouldn't want it. They might want to stay with their friends. They might want to create new things, accomplish what hasn't been before. They might want to make new discoveries about the outside world. Their wants would not be compatible with sitting around being happy all day. And reading the story, we find that this is actually the more compelling of the two reasons to at least one protagonist at the conclusion of Part 7: The Lord Pilot doesn't want to be a wirehead. I suspect this is Eliezer Yudkowsky's point, that preferences don't have to be simplified. But in designing this scenario, in creating a plot to convey his message, the message has been undermined. Becuase the Super Happies do have friends, create new things, and make new discoveries about the outside world. They arrived at that star system because they detected a flux in the starline -- the same reason that brought the Babyeaters and the humans. They were happy to meet new species, optimistic about discovering new people to communicate with. (And 'communicate' with, being as that's the same thing for Super Happies, but that's unimportant.) And their technology was more advanced than either humanity's or the Babyeaters. The very reasons why wireheading is an ugly prospect are empirically baseless in the universe of "Three Worlds Collide". Given the choice between being Socrates dissatisfied and a pig satisfied, one might be forgiven for desiring the cleverness of Socrates. But given the choice between Socrates dissatisfied and Archimedes satisfied, the former becomes difficult to defend. -- User:Robin Zimm P.S. A few commenters on Less Wrong have requested that a note be added regarding wireheading: it has been discovered recently that wanting and liking run on different circuits. Being wireheaded to want may well cause behavior like that of the rats without any pleasure at all. P.P.S. I don't actually have a citation for the wireheading rats. I cannot attest to whether any such experiments was actually performed, nor as to the results of said experiments, nor as to the effect of other parameters (e.g. the presence of alternative forms of entertainment) in the test environment. Back to Three Worlds Collide.
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