Taking drugs

Is there any difference between taking a drug like marijuana or ecstacy vs antidepressants, legal issues aside? It seems to me that they are both categories of drugs taken for the sole purpose of increasing happiness.

What makes you think that we have an obligation to work toward our own happiness? Isn't happiness something that we seek for its own sake and not because we are obliged to do so?

I liked being high. I liked the energy. I liked the altered reality I experienced while I was high. Happiness, or lack thereof, was never a factor in the equation. Getting as high as possible was.
Now, whether or not you differentiate between the pursuit of "fun" as something synonymous with pursuit of happiness, I don't know. Perhaps you can elaborate on this distinction if it matters.

Because every conscious decision that a person makes serves the ulterior purpose of attempting to fulfilling personal happiness. The motive of fulfilling happiness may not be a conscious one, but it is still there.

For instance, a person who gives to the poor, or makes personal sacrifices, does so because they think it is right...and in so doing, they feel that they are doing good, and this brings them happiness at the cost of material things.

In other extreme examples, many times people do things that cause themselves to be less happy...like cowardly abandoning a friend, or getting themselves shamelessly addicted and drawn into some downward spiral...but even these actions were done for the subconscious ulterior motive of personal happiness; they did not think things through, perhaps, but at the time they did what they wanted to do -- at the time, their fear, or their addiction, made them want to do one thing instead of the other...and therefore what they did (they thought) they wanted to do most.

Clearly, personal happiness is the ultimate goal of every person...

...although it is not so easily defined, because the ingredients for happiness vary so much, and could appear entirely selfless, or even suicidal. But my point is that if drugs can be used to bring on happiness, it seems stubborn to ignore them. Of course, even the most effective drugs have ways of bringing about unhappiness as well, for instance withdrawl, cost, disapproval of friends and relatives, addiction...so it is for reasons like this that we avoid them. But hypothetically, if a drug could bring only happiness...

So, for instance, when I choose to eat with my fork in my right hand rather in my left hand, I am motivated by an attempt to fulfill my personal happiness? Frankly, I find that rather difficult to believe. There is nothing to suggest that every conscious decision is motivated by a desire to increase one's happiness.

But what then is the person's motivation? The desire to do right or the desire to increase happiness? Or are they the same thing?

So you'd argue that no one does anything akratically (i.e. against their own interests)?

I don't think that's very clear at all. Take Robert Nozick's example of the "Experience Machine." If personal happiness were truly the ultimate goal of every person, then every person would prefer to be hooked up to an experience machine that provided unalloyed pleasure rather than living a life that did not guarantee such ceaseless delight. Are you saying that everyone would make that choice if given the opportunity?

Choosing which hand to use is not normally a conscious decision, so it does not apply to my statement. However, if you were to stop and think about it for some reason, you would notice that you are less comfortable using your left hand, which would make eating feel less natural and be less efficient at achieving the goal of putting food in your stomach. Assuming that you are hungry, putting food in your stomach would increase your happiness. Feeling uncomfortable would decrease your happiness. Therefore, if you made the decision consciously, then yes it would be motivated by personal happiness like everything else (I argue).

Unconscious or instinctive actions do not have motivations. For conscious decisions, there are infinite possible surface motivations, corresponding to the infinite possible interactions in the world and our emotions and desires and relationships etc. I argue that every single one of these infinite possible surface motivations is just a more specialized classification of the motivation to achieve happiness. I do not expect that the person be aware of the higher order motivations that the intended motivation inherits from.

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So you'd argue that no one does anything akratically (i.e. against their own interests)?

If it were an instinctive or impulsive act that did not require thinking than it could be. These actions are controlled by a subconscious processing unit.

If you define personal interests by some arbitrary metric of observing a person's behavior, you cannot expect their actions to appear to satisfy their own interests.

But we must recognize that every decision that a person makes is based on the input data. Some of this input data comes from memory (past experiences), some of it is streaming. If we did not have a way of distinguishing good decisions from bad ones, we would have no need of a brain to make decisions because all decisions would be equally good.

Therefore, we do have a means for comparing two decisions, and this means for comparing can be roughly referred to as a "set of goals" although it is clear that it cannot be so easily surmised as a simple list of things to achieve -- we do not know how these goals are actually represented.

Furthermore, these goals must have either been encoded into our brains genetically or acquired through life experience (the more likely, most common way). In order for the brain to determine goals from life experience it must rely on judging what had positive or negative feedback according to more basic innate goals. I believe that there is no other kind of happiness other than these basic innate positive/negative feedbacks. Therefore, since all possible goals that drive the brains' decisions were based on these feedbacks, it is straightforward to see that the brain's decisions at a low level merely attempt to satisfy the original positive feedbacks and minimize the negative feedbacks. (also, note that a decision making process is not instantaneous and is therefore subject to feedback cycles loops etc, which could result in a no-action without that being the desired choice)

Anyway, back on point -- my view is that a person would not choose the experience machine because their experiences have "taught them" (eg, developed goals) that either give negative feedback for trying to take the easy way out, or positive feedback for the inverse. Our brains do not revert to the original positive/negative feedbacks when making complex decisions because this problem would be of nearly infinitely higher order complexity. Instead, the brain attempts to maximize the goals that were developed based on the low-order feedbacks. There must be a very good system for developing goals because in most cases this works out because the experiences in our life are relatively static, in terms of what is and is not possible. We have not grown up around the possibility of "experience machines." A newborn child would not have any goals developed yet, so it would simply try things and work on developing goals based on the innate positive/negative feedback. If it tried the experience machine, it would get (by definition) positive feedback, and it would then develop a higher order goal system oriented around that. In our developments we learned that in most cases, hard work pays off while shortcutting can result in bad side effects...and this gives rise to goals that bring out personality traits like stubbornness, pride, etc...and these could prevent a person from choosing the experience machine, regardless of how much verbal convincing you tried to do -- they cannot use logic to rearrange the higher order goals. However, the higher order goals can be changed over time by new experiences because they are constantly in a state of flux, so if a mature person was forced to use the experience machine for a long enough period of time (and by definition, the experience machine cannot result in any negative effects) then that person will undoubtedly become a proponent of the machine and choose to use it voluntarily once taken off.*

* Note: there is one caveat. Although the experience machine itself, by definiton, has no ill effects, being forced to do something will likely already be developed as a negative higher-order goal, so the initial hooking up to the device would give negative feedback to the person, which would delay the time it took for the person to become a proponent of the machine. Because some type of time-weighted average must be used to readjust goals, this delay would very likely never be infinite, although the time might very well be longer than a person's lifetime, resulting in them never liking the machine. But if they were immortal, then at some time, they would eventually like it.

That's very interesting FreeDuck.

I couple of months ago I watched this documentary about LSD. The interviews were with the original developers of the drug, and what their intents for it were.

Bottem line, all of them were disappointed that Timothy Leary got hold of it and turned it into something recreational in peoples minds.

The way they explained it, they saw that LSD had the potential to help some people, but it had to be done under STRICTLY CONTROLLED circumstances. It was not like, here, take a hit of acid and let's see what happens.

Of course it got in the hands of just about everybody, with no proper preparation or understanding of its potential.

hmmmm....

I am equally adept at using a fork with my right hand as I am at using one with my left hand. To me, it makes no difference, as I can feed myself quite satisfactorily regardless of my choice. Yet I certainly do not pick up a fork with either hand unconsciously. So how is my choice conducive to my happiness?

Then how do you know if you're right? If a person's higher-order motivations are unknown even to that person, how do you know what they are?

I can't imagine that my definition of "personal interests" is any more arbitrary than your definition of "personal happiness." Surely a person can judge what is in his or her own best interests just as easily as a person can judge what is most conducive to his or her own happiness.

Judging by your responses, I really don't think you get my drift at all. Maybe I explained badly, maybe I was too long winded, or maybe you didn't read it very carefully.

I do not believe that you have to consciously think about which hand to use every time you sit down to eat! That's just ridiculous. When you sit down to eat you have better things to ponder, and you automatically reach for the fork with whatever hand you are most familiar with using, even if you are ambi.

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Then how do you know if you're right? If a person's higher-order motivations are unknown even to that person, how do you know what they are?

Because the principles my theory is deduced from are so basic that I don't see that there is any other plausible alternative.

Surely, not. What you suggest is, actually, completely impossible.

First of all, ask a person what makes them happy. They might say, my son, going skiing, my husband, cooking, Gray's Anatomy. You see, they really have no idea what the function is that controls happiness. They only know that certain inputs to the function result in their own happiness, by personal experienced.

Furthermore, since we are so good at deducing things, we can often make some guesses about the function. We might be able to guess that "things where I can use my creativity" or "when I can help other people..." etc. This is about as 'deep' of an analysis that we can do. But these two are higher order things!!! At a basic level, what makes us happy is when a specific chemical reaction occurs. That's what makes us happy.

Given several options and asked to make a decision, a person cannot fully know exactly what chemical reactions are going to occur in their brain that might result in happiness or sadness. That problem is simply too complex. What we CAN do is make higher order guesses, we can tell that, for instance, it will be similar to something else that we liked or didn't like, and then we can guess what will make us more happy based on that. But it is simply impossible to actually know for sure which action will cause the most happiness, assuming the problem is even open -- which, of course, it is not -- there are infinite hidden variables.

stuh505 wrote:

But we must recognize that every decision that a person makes is based on the input data. Some of this input data comes from memory (past experiences), some of it is streaming. If we did not have a way of distinguishing good decisions from bad ones, we would have no need of a brain to make decisions because all decisions would be equally good.

Therefore, we do have a means for comparing two decisions, and this means for comparing can be roughly referred to as a "set of goals" although it is clear that it cannot be so easily surmised as a simple list of things to achieve -- we do not know how these goals are actually represented.

Furthermore, these goals must have either been encoded into our brains genetically or acquired through life experience (the more likely, most common way). In order for the brain to determine goals from life experience it must rely on judging what had positive or negative feedback according to more basic innate goals. I believe that there is no other kind of happiness other than these basic innate positive/negative feedbacks. Therefore, since all possible goals that drive the brains' decisions were based on these feedbacks, it is straightforward to see that the brain's decisions at a low level merely attempt to satisfy the original positive feedbacks and minimize the negative feedbacks. (also, note that a decision making process is not instantaneous and is therefore subject to feedback cycles loops etc, which could result in a no-action without that being the desired choice)

If you define "happiness" as "positive feedbacks," then you've pretty much admitted that you have no definition for "happiness," since your description of "positive feedbacks" is simply another way of saying "that which makes one happy." It's an empty tautology.

stuh505 wrote:

Anyway, back on point -- my view is that a person would not choose the experience machine because their experiences have "taught them" (eg, developed goals) that either give negative feedback for trying to take the easy way out, or positive feedback for the inverse. Our brains do not revert to the original positive/negative feedbacks when making complex decisions because this problem would be of nearly infinitely higher order complexity. Instead, the brain attempts to maximize the goals that were developed based on the low-order feedbacks. There must be a very good system for developing goals because in most cases this works out because the experiences in our life are relatively static, in terms of what is and is not possible. We have not grown up around the possibility of "experience machines." A newborn child would not have any goals developed yet, so it would simply try things and work on developing goals based on the innate positive/negative feedback. If it tried the experience machine, it would get (by definition) positive feedback, and it would then develop a higher order goal system oriented around that. In our developments we learned that in most cases, hard work pays off while shortcutting can result in bad side effects...and this gives rise to goals that bring out personality traits like stubbornness, pride, etc...and these could prevent a person from choosing the experience machine, regardless of how much verbal convincing you tried to do -- they cannot use logic to rearrange the higher order goals. However, the higher order goals can be changed over time by new experiences because they are constantly in a state of flux, so if a mature person was forced to use the experience machine for a long enough period of time (and by definition, the experience machine cannot result in any negative effects) then that person will undoubtedly become a proponent of the machine and choose to use it voluntarily once taken off.*

Or, in other words, people won't choose the experience machine because they are not conditioned to choose the experience machine. Right?

stuh505 wrote:

* Note: there is one caveat. Although the experience machine itself, by definiton, has no ill effects, being forced to do something will likely already be developed as a negative higher-order goal, so the initial hooking up to the device would give negative feedback to the person, which would delay the time it took for the person to become a proponent of the machine. Because some type of time-weighted average must be used to readjust goals, this delay would very likely never be infinite, although the time might very well be longer than a person's lifetime, resulting in them never liking the machine. But if they were immortal, then at some time, they would eventually like it.

Who said anything about forcing people to use the experience machine?

Is there any difference between taking a drug like marijuana or ecstacy vs antidepressants, legal issues aside? It seems to me that they are both categories of drugs taken for the sole purpose of increasing happiness.

Is there any difference between taking a drug like marijuana or ecstacy vs antidepressants, legal issues aside? It seems to me that they are both categories of drugs taken for the sole purpose of increasing happiness