Executive summary: The author argues that if illusionism about consciousness is true, then building “hedonium” (simple systems optimized for happiness) becomes a tractable scientific project that could inform both moral progress and near-term AI welfare decisions.
Key points:
Hedonium is conceived as a minimally conscious system optimized to experience happiness as efficiently as possible.
The author argues that illusionism removes a major barrier to hedonium research because pleasure and pain are physical processes rather than mysterious non-physical phenomena.
Even non-illusionists should be interested in an illusionist-inspired research program because it offers a concrete, empirically tractable approach to studying consciousness.
Under illusionism, consciousness research should focus on a system’s representations, perceptions, dispositions, self-models, and their interactions, rather than asking whether consciousness is generated by physical processes.
The author argues that illusionists must explain, in material terms, what features of pleasure and pain ground their moral significance.
Progress on understanding valenced experience may be needed soon because AI alignment decisions could have significant consequences for AI welfare and those decisions may become entrenched over time.
The proposed hedonium project would synthesize evidence on valence, identify indicators of pleasure and pain, develop mechanistic models, and potentially instantiate simple pleasure-producing systems.
The author estimates that a small, dedicated research team could make meaningful progress on this agenda.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The author argues that if illusionism about consciousness is true, then building “hedonium” (simple systems optimized for happiness) becomes a tractable scientific project that could inform both moral progress and near-term AI welfare decisions.
Key points:
Hedonium is conceived as a minimally conscious system optimized to experience happiness as efficiently as possible.
The author argues that illusionism removes a major barrier to hedonium research because pleasure and pain are physical processes rather than mysterious non-physical phenomena.
Even non-illusionists should be interested in an illusionist-inspired research program because it offers a concrete, empirically tractable approach to studying consciousness.
Under illusionism, consciousness research should focus on a system’s representations, perceptions, dispositions, self-models, and their interactions, rather than asking whether consciousness is generated by physical processes.
The author argues that illusionists must explain, in material terms, what features of pleasure and pain ground their moral significance.
Progress on understanding valenced experience may be needed soon because AI alignment decisions could have significant consequences for AI welfare and those decisions may become entrenched over time.
The proposed hedonium project would synthesize evidence on valence, identify indicators of pleasure and pain, develop mechanistic models, and potentially instantiate simple pleasure-producing systems.
The author estimates that a small, dedicated research team could make meaningful progress on this agenda.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.