When the mind finds that negative or positive feedback doesn't vary based on its actions, it shuts down and enters a state of catatonia since mental processes are no longer needed.
I forget what this is called in animal psychology (when, for example, the rat gets shocked randomly no matter what it does for long enough). I don't think it's extensively studied on account of being a form of torture, but it follows from our understanding of mind.
It depends on what you think *you* are. If it has anything to do with a thinking mind, you'd functionally cease to exist.
Only if you crack open the black box and short circuit it. Pleasure and pain mechanisms drive the mind in the same way gears drive a clock (thus the clock analogy I gave). It would be equally wrong to say those are the goals as to say the purpose of a clock is to spin the gears as fast as possible.cookiedivine wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 11:39 amCouldn't you argue that, ultimately, it is all for pleasure?
That is, the desire to pursue goals ultimately comes from the desire to experience the pleasure that fulfilling these goals give us?
Pleasure and pain in a properly functioning mind are carefully regulated and create diminishing returns.
Because it suggests people do not really think pleasure is the goal.Cirion Spellbinder wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:27 pmWhy is this significant?brimstoneSalad wrote:[...] otherwise you'd be game for being plugged into the mindless pleasure machine for the rest of your bedridden and meaningless life.
Not really. See the first point in my reply above; that would work at odds with sentience.Cirion Spellbinder wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:27 pmAn interest based approach would be game for creating extremely sentient and easily reproducible organisms with singular, easily and quickly satisfiable interests. Just as unpleasant.
Much like a video game that's no fun with a "win button" (and provides no fulfillment without some challenge), so is any fulfillment of interests.
Of course torture is not conducive to that, but there's probably a calculus to it that would provide a low and optimal level of frustration.
Optimal would probably be everybody living in Equestria or something, where nothing really terrible ever happens, but things aren't so perfect to make us mindless either, and that might involve being plugged into a "matrix", but a mindful and entertaining one rather than one of mindless euphoria.
Probably not implicit atheists, but explicit/new atheists.Lightningman_42 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:45 pmWhy do you think that most atheists are hedonists, or that pleasure/suffering-fixated morality is the most common type among atheists?
I don't have any statistics on it, just overwhelming observation.