"Are there any wireheading proponents in this crowd?"
I have never heard the term and this is my first introduction to the concept, at least framed in this manner ...
But ... aren't we all, already, "wireheads" ? Our tools and heuristics might be a little blunt, or ineffectual, but the quote you provide:
"Their primary state of consciousness cycles over a period of 24 hours. Here is their routine: They wake up and experience intense zest for life and work at full capacity making others happy and having fun. Then they go crazy creative in the afternoon, usually spending that time alone or with friends, and explore (and share) strange but always awesome psychedelic-like states of consciousness. Finally, at night they just relax to the max (the healthy and genetically encoded phenomenological equivalent of shooting heroin)."
... sounds a lot like the better days that I have - it's just that I accomplish it with Caffeine, meditation, intense exercise, good sleep hygiene and (sometimes) alcohol.
While I haven't formally explored my day to day life on a happiness maximization metric, I did not come to these tools accidently, or randomly - I've slowly tailored them, and my own habits, to achieve maximum happiness on a specific time horizon ...
It's an interesting thing, because I also take caffeine, and exercise, and meditate. Maybe it's just a matter of degrees, a sliding scale. But "too much of a good thing" isn't unheard of, and I have a strong suspicion that "pleasure control" is one of those things that's tolerable in small doses, but ultimately isn't conducive to survival or satisfaction, especially taken to the extreme of avoiding negative emotions entirely.
I have never heard the term and this is my first introduction to the concept, at least framed in this manner ...
But ... aren't we all, already, "wireheads" ? Our tools and heuristics might be a little blunt, or ineffectual, but the quote you provide:
"Their primary state of consciousness cycles over a period of 24 hours. Here is their routine: They wake up and experience intense zest for life and work at full capacity making others happy and having fun. Then they go crazy creative in the afternoon, usually spending that time alone or with friends, and explore (and share) strange but always awesome psychedelic-like states of consciousness. Finally, at night they just relax to the max (the healthy and genetically encoded phenomenological equivalent of shooting heroin)."
... sounds a lot like the better days that I have - it's just that I accomplish it with Caffeine, meditation, intense exercise, good sleep hygiene and (sometimes) alcohol.
While I haven't formally explored my day to day life on a happiness maximization metric, I did not come to these tools accidently, or randomly - I've slowly tailored them, and my own habits, to achieve maximum happiness on a specific time horizon ...