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Article 5708 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: learn@speedy.acns.nwu.edu (William J. Vajk)
Subject: Re: AI failures
Message-ID: <1992May17.144901.8032@news.acns.nwu.edu>
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Organization: Dares No Organization Like Dis Organization
References: <1992May16.125258.15430@news.media.mit.edu> <1992May16.162406.17453@news.media.mit.edu> <1992May17.082629.27776@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 17 May 1992 14:49:01 GMT

In article <1992May17.082629.27776@news.media.mit.edu> Nick Cassimatis writes:

>In article <1992May16.162406.17453@news.media.mit.edu> Marvin Minsky writes:

>>In <1992May16.125258.15430@news.media.mit.edu> Nick Cassimatis writes:

>>> ... So all of the
>>>harm of the circularity is bottled up into the choice of happiness
>>>over misery. Now this is not a hard choice to make.  So moral
>>>deliberation becomes both a scientific and technological endeavor.

>>Sorry, but it is an *extremely* hard choice to make, because you're
>>programmed to be biased in favor of pleasure, comforts, "happiness",
>>etc. 

>>You say, "health and happiness".  And we frequently see claims that
>>these are correlated, so that cancer patients do better if kept happy.

>I guess I threw around that phrase rather carelessly, but I think that
>it is generally easier to be happy if one is healthy.

The "health & happiness" saw is an old one, and not nearly as absolute,
it seems, as we once tought. Any time this discussion comes to life, 
someone manages to jump in by providing notable counterexamples which
the group engaged in discussion has generally dismissed. As we have been
acquiring more useful knowledge in the real world about happiness (as the
counterpoint to depression) it seems their points had more of a validity
than previously allowed by popular opinion.

It is most likely that up to some threshold, happiness is an active choice.
Beyond that threshold, which we're working in the real world to define,
lies a region of limited choice in which happiness takes a serious degree
of work to achieve for limited periods, with little to no choice available
for the balance of realtime, depression being the norm.

The spectrum of happiness/depression as an outlook has a great role to 
play in actual decisions made by human beings. To say that everyone
chooses happiness is probably accurate. How they go about achieving the
level of happiness available to them is a different issue, however, as
is the average of "happiness state" they are able to achieve given their
particular genetic makeup.

Interestingly, there is probably more unhappiness among the most intelligent 
(my personal observation with no real numbers to back this up.) This alone
suggests to me something for which I do have some real data. That choice
alone is not *the* controlling factor; the limitations imposed by genetic 
predisposition play a very large role. We have begun to understand some of 
the physical aspects and the relationships to happiness.

Bill Vajk



