The Value of desires, humanity and where we want to go

[fjafjan]

I find it very hard to explain what my question is, but I shall try my best
As humans, we are born with certain drives, desires, many of them shared by other animals.
But as science progresses we have, generally in Corporate interests, become increasinly skilled at manufacturing desires, alot of people want to buy a BMW, or own Gold Jewelry.

The interesting bit is where we go from now, if we could create a sentient being, what would it do?
It would not naturaly have some desires or drives what to do, it might not be interesting in exploring it's surroundings, or communicate with other such beings on Humans.
It would have no drive to do so, unless we made it so.

If we as a species can decide what Urger, what desires we should have, and I think this might become an unavoidable choice at some point, how do we catagorize which drives are bad, and which are good.
Assuming we reach singularily this becomes an even great question, what should we as a civlization strive to do? Colonizing space is simply based in the human desire for going into new lands, which served a evolutionary purpose, and still might, if Hawking is correct.

Attempting to formulate the question more clearly, since human desires are not perfect, how should we, when we get the possibility, reshuffle them?

[crazyjimbo]

The simple desire to place others needs before ones own would go a long way to improving civilisation. If everyone had this drive, we wouldn't need our drive to fulfill our own needs as others would do it for us. I obviously can't predict the effect this would have on society as a whole as it would be a drastic change.

Currently a lot of people are driven by ambition, or to put it differently, greed. This can be a two sided coin depending on what the greed is for, but if we could make people greedy for happiness and intellectual advancement I don't think we would go wrong. Obvisouly these wouldn't be put above drive number one.

And to just to cap it off, and fully sound like Asimov's robot laws, people should look after themselves .

[FiddleMath]

In order, I think:

Basic survival (eat, drink, sleep, don't die)
Compassion
Understanding of self; understanding of the world; creative activity.

More or less, these are the things that lead directly to fulfilling Maslow's hierarchy. Also, interestingly enough, these are the things that are taught by mainline Buddhism - at least, in my admittedly dilute understanding. The trick is to make sure that "understanding of the world" includes understanding the utility that others find in subverting your desires towards their own ends.

From a memetic perspective, "People attempt the external subversion of internal desires" is a powerful countermeme to many kinds of propaganda.

[3.14159265...]

Fulfillement, in a non-maslow way!

[Owijad]

What does that mean?

[fjafjan]

Okey, so I think I should rephrase this.

We do everything we do based on a number of primal instincts and urges, that served us well when we lived as hunterers/gatherers.
These same desires, incentives and so forth are not however always that useful in a modern society, and perhaps even more so in a future society.

However this raises many problems, and I would have hoiped that these fora would have been an axcellent place to discuss them.
What drives are uselss?
What drives are great?
it's such a vast topic that it might be hard to start somewhere...

but ofcourse also why it is so very appealing.

[Phenriz]

See that's a tricky topic to discuss, because we have certain segments of the human race who feel they're superior to the rest of humanity. Your token white supremicist from the deep south of the united states, your "convert or die" arab from iran, or your xenophobic asian from north korea. (don't read this as an attack on these given races i know as a whole these peoples aren't this extreme) This instinct (or drive) is, i feel, one that can be gotten rid of all together.... the need to be Homogeneous. The need to be with "your own kind". While it's important to know where you come from, it should by no means be a deterrent to forming relationships (friendly, romantically, or business oriented) with people of a different background or heritage.

Unfortunately, even within groups that tolerate each other, they form even smaller sub-groups or cliques, Human beings need to categorize and segment things is great for our scientific purposes, but also poses a great hinderance to societal development.

i'm not sure exactly where i'm going with that thought, so take it for what you will.

[Vaniver]

But as science progresses we have, generally in Corporate interests, become increasinly skilled at manufacturing desires, alot of people want to buy a BMW, or own Gold Jewelry.

We can't manufacture desires.

The desire to buy a BMW is not specific to BMW. It's a combination of several primal desires- the desire for creature comforts; the desire to impress others (or, to keep up with the Joneses); the desire to feel good about oneself. It's just that in our culture to do that one buys a BMW, instead of a well-groomed camel.

If we as a species can decide what Urger, what desires we should have, and I think this might become an unavoidable choice at some point, how do we catagorize which drives are bad, and which are good.

There's no real objective way to answer this. I might be happy with eunuchs who see mental pursuits and discovery as the ultimate joy in life; many others wouldn't be.

Basic survival (eat, drink, sleep, don't die)

The problem here is that desires are generally not designed for moderation.

Food tastes good because if it didn't taste good, you might starve yourself to death. But, we follow the taste of food for its own benefit- the glutton is not ensuring his survival.

Perhaps it would be possible to tie together one's taste buds and one's stomach, so that when the latter is full, food tastes like ash?

[Belial]

Perhaps it would be possible to tie together one's taste buds and one's stomach, so that when the latter is full, food tastes like ash?

This is already true to a lesser extent. As you fill up, your taste buds slowly dull, which is why, traditionally, dessert is the last part of the meal: by the end of the meal, your taste buds are so dull that you *need* something that sweet to engage them.

Of course, there are several types of diet that negate this response, and also, it's not *incredibly* pronounced, so maybe a more severe version would be a good idea.

::cue "the more you know" music::

[mkrauss]

Attempting to formulate the question more clearly, since human desires are not perfect, how should we, when we get the possibility, reshuffle them?

We should not.

That would be messing with evolution. Messing with evolution is bad. Very bad.

Even if we didn't manage to dick it up (and we would), you are assuming that civilization will just keep moving on as it has been. What if something changed? A meteor or comet impact, a nuclear war, alien invasion... Our decendents would be crippled to deal with it.

The great thing is that while some desires (obtain food, obtain sex, avoid big bad scary things) have proven so useful that evolution has hard-wired them in to us, most of them are actually quite flexible and can be highly enfluenced or even rewritten by our culture. In other words, we can achieve what you are getting at (without messing with evolution) right now; just affect changes to our culture. And in fact, we have done so, though usually without any particular intent or methodology.

[fjafjan]

Are you saying evolution is perfect?
That is simply not the case, the reason we still have wars, starvation, deceases, is because evolution is Okay, but we are often smarter than evolution.
messing with evolution will be necessary, the question is how we should do it.

[mister k]

A lot of our evolutionary impulses are rather outdated- people mention eating, well we are hard wired to eat lots of delicious fatty foods because for a few million of years we did not know when we were getting our meals next. Now we are far more sedentary we simply do not NEED the appetite that we have, and could move on.

Also our ability to pattern spot, while pretty awesome, is a bit faulty- thats why so many of us believe nonsenses like tossing salt over ones shoulder or praying to your deity.

Tinkering with something you do not understand is of course dangerous, because you have no idea what the effects of that might be, but it is rather immaterial as we do not have the ability to change that at the moment. Although we can do certain things- we can effect appetite, sexual drive, eyesight... well a lot of stuff.

[blob]

Are you saying evolution is perfect?
That is simply not the case, the reason we still have wars, starvation, deceases, is because evolution is Okay, but we are often smarter than evolution.
messing with evolution will be necessary, the question is how we should do it.

The way I think of evolution, you can't mess with it - only pull it in new directions. Until recently (in universe time), evolution had nothing to do with life, but ended up responsible for stars and planets etc ... so even if people start changing their genes or adding cyborg implants to themselves, it'll still be evolution, just on the next level.

Even if we humans wiped ourselves and our planet out, that would just be evolution's/reality's way of saying "gee, that intelligent lifeform didn't work out too well - better spend a few million years cooking up an alternative."