Re: We are NOT our DNA

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Oct 21 2002 - 03:25:03 MDT


Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, gts, responding to my comments wrote:
>
>>Sexual desire affects our day-to-day thoughts and behaviors and
>>personal interactions in subtle ways even when we are not focusing on
>>it... we are very sexual beings. If we eliminate the sexual effects of
>>sex hormones then our personalities will change quite dramatically (and
>>life will be much less fun. :) Is this what we want? I think not.
>
> I think Eliezer would step in here -- if one wires the pleasure that
> sex generally confers into the circuit for creating symphonies then
> one gets very productive composers (based on some of his ideas regarding
> generalized "fun" if I'm not misinterpreting them).

Good lord, no! Sex is *multiplayer* fun. It would be philosophically
unacceptable to wire it into a single-player game. I'm with Greg Egan and
Spider Robinson on this one; the proper generalization of sex is telepathy.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


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