On Fri, Aug 11, 2023, 4:59 AM <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> What you said is simply not how humans work. We *can* indeed sustain max
> happiness, even sadness and pain, for months or years.
>

You would think that happiness comes from getting what you want. But there
is no evidence that people are happier today than 100 or 1000 years ago in
spite of vastly better living conditions. We don't know that human are
happier than other animals. The only animals known to commit suicide have
large brains, like humans, dolphins, and whales.

In fact the suicide rate is increasing. In the US, it is 1.5% of all
deaths, up from 1% 20 years ago. The rate is highest in the groups with the
highest income. It is 4 times higher in men than women, twice as high in
whites as blacks, and highest in the 45-65 age group when income usually
peaks.

I have been having a good lunch every day for 10 years straight, fries and
> nuggets, every day. Similarly we have fun with a girl then like to stop
> after a few hours.
>

Happiness is a positive reinforcement signal or an increase in utility.
Optimal reinforcement learning is not computable (AIXI), so we evolved an
approximation, which is to repeat any action that preceded the signal. The
difference is that in the optimal case, your drive to use drugs to directly
activate the reward signal would be the same whether or not you used the
drug before. It's good that it's not, because 3% of US deaths are from drug
overdose (mostly fentanyl, followed by meth) because users can't stop, just
like you eat the same thing every day. Overdose deaths are doubling every 7
years. This is why US life expectancy has leveled off at 79 after
increasing 0.2 years per year from 1950 to 2014, and is now surpassed by
China.

More disturbing, AI is addictive. As it gets smarter, we prefer its company
to humans. We spend more time on our phones and less with people. More
young people are living alone and socially isolated. About 30% of US high
school students have had sex, down from 50% in 1990. About 25% are LGBTQ or
non binary. Sexbots and VR porn will eliminate the need for relationships.
Smart home security cameras and self driving deliveries will make living
alone safe and convenient. Nobody will care whether you exist.

BTW How does sex outside marriage result in less babies?

Pair bonding evolved in humans, like in prairie voles and some bird
species, because children raised by 2 parents had better survival odds when
the child mortality rate was 50-75%. Humans are the only primates that fall
in love after sex and the only mammals that don't go into heat or that have
sex when not ovulating or that cover their reproductive organs to suppress
sexual signaling. When humans evolved language, it enabled rapid memetic
evolution of religion and social rules to maximize reproduction. Those
rules can be abandoned just as quickly, resulting in population decline.

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