In humans, as you beautifully note, there’s a distinction between the conscious states that are most pleasurable (e.g. equanimity) and the states that most motivating, and most want to propagate themselves (e.g. compulsions).
Maybe this is a quite general fact about conscious states. And maybe, among post-human and non-human minds, just as the peaks of bliss might be far higher than the best experiences we can feel today, the strength of self-propagation might be far greater, too. A future being, trying to explore the landscape of experiences, might enter into one of those super-self-propagating states, and then be lost inside of it forever.
If so, then we’re more likely to get a future that consists mainly of the self-propagating conscious states, rather than the actually-best conscious states—and thereby lose out on most possible value.
A (speculative) thought I hadn’t had before:
In humans, as you beautifully note, there’s a distinction between the conscious states that are most pleasurable (e.g. equanimity) and the states that most motivating, and most want to propagate themselves (e.g. compulsions).
Maybe this is a quite general fact about conscious states. And maybe, among post-human and non-human minds, just as the peaks of bliss might be far higher than the best experiences we can feel today, the strength of self-propagation might be far greater, too. A future being, trying to explore the landscape of experiences, might enter into one of those super-self-propagating states, and then be lost inside of it forever.
If so, then we’re more likely to get a future that consists mainly of the self-propagating conscious states, rather than the actually-best conscious states—and thereby lose out on most possible value.