Wireheading

Lesswrong has a couple of great articles about wireheading.

One interesting question, to me, is this: If, given the choice, you could enter a state of maximum pleasure for a very long time, would do do it? Would you decide to turn into a wirehead?

Some details can affect the decision somewhat, such as: how long? do you return to your previous state afterwards? do you remember the feeling afterwards, or is the memory of the sensation erased? the memory of the whole experience erased?

Another version of the question would be this: The genie gives you a configurable wireheading machine, such that you can tweak all those settings to your liking.

Would you still choose to enter the machine? And if so, with what settings?

Pleasure for the sake of pleasure alone is a weird thing. But at the same time, maximum pleasure (in the space of all possible mind states) is something (if it exists) that we cannot even conceive of. So, by extrapolation, it must be very, very high, and very, very pleasurable.

So I’m still not sure what I would choose.