About the notion of deserving [thought experiment]

@FC-in-the-UK said in #28:
> Sometimes the most obvious-looking notions are the most tricky ones. There is actually NO WAY TO DEFINE TRUTH. The proof is very simple and very ancient: if you could define truth, you could express "this sentence is not true". The self-reference is NOT an issue (this is known since the work of Gödel).
> @Akbar2thegreat @StevenEmily @Hedgehog1963 in this thought experiment you aren't an actual deity. You only are God-like in the sense that you have the power to remove Mr X's ability to feel happiness with a click of your fingers, and nothing more, nothing less.
> @kyanite111 what about sadists? What about people who enjoy exerting powers on others? What about people like Alexander the Great, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoléon, Hitler, Putin?
>
> It is blatantly obvious that any measurement of a life lived is meaningless.

You can define "this sentence is not true" by just doing ( ph <-> ph is not true ), where "ph" is a variable and "<->" is the biconditional operator, used here to "define" ph to be the sentence "ph is not true" in the same way that the "and" operator is defined here: http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/df-an.html

And you can "define true" as well: http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/df-tru.html
(I could guess at what you're actually saying about Godel's incompleteness theorem and definition but I'll let you expand)

Edit: (Didn't read)

Anyways, here's my updated simplfied idea of the problem:

Someone ("Bad") is terrible and isn't getting punished and is happy.
Remove ability to be happy?

And I'm going to assume some more things:
1. Just like asking an AI to "duplicate the strawberry but otherwise affect the world as little as possible", removing happiness does not include some extraneous thing like murder or adding a coffee allergy.
2. Not only does Bad like others suffering, but others are actually suffering because of Bad.

So to me this question feels more like:
Would others suffering improve enough such that removing happiness from bad is worth it?

And I don't really have enough information about how others are affected to answer that.
One thing "for" this is that Bad doesn't "deserve happiness"... but I think that in a theoretical "Bad happy" > "Bad not happy" (given nothing else is affected by happiness.)
One thing "against" this is the possibility that removing happiness won't make things better or will even make things worse.

Possibility. My brain wants to do math here but there's not really any number given to any of this. It would be clear if "removing happiness" helped the world "7" and "keeping happiness" hurt the world "7".

Really there's a math equation:
keep happiness ?< remove happiness

But saying I don't know isn't going to solve the problem since I'll have to make a choice anyways.
I'd guess that almost all ways of removing happiness (not including just outright murder) will result in death after some time due to unstable brain chemistry and the (I'm really guessing here don't know much about how the brain works) many ridiculous requirements to not break of the laws of physics (for example, what happens to the endorphins that already exist in bad's brain?)

I would probably say yes to that actually, ifff the person was absolutely (or mostly) evil and wants evil to exist more, because the money will probably be used on something other than bad... hmm let's see

Keep happiness:
Negative impact on ...everything mentioned (by assumptions) except bad.

Remove happiness:
Unknown impact on ...everything mentioned (by assumptions) except bad but my brain wants to say generally positive, though just only somewhat.

I think the above really gets to the heart of the situation.
Again, it's quite possible that the question implies it will be greatly positive to the sufferers in which case of course.

A "justification" for caring less about bad is that improving the situation of bad doesn't really improve the world. But ethically I don't think that's a good justification. It's more likely that the life of bad counts (moral uncertainty). But even so, I'm going to say, probably bad will hurt people enough (e.g.: a lot) that it's worth it.

*Given* the assumption that bad will die much sooner if happiness is taken away, and that bad will live many times longer (more suffering) if happiness isn't. For example, 5 years vs 30 years.

But by how I simulate normal people, I don't think the asker was even considering bad's death. So in _that_ scenario, where bad lives a long time in both ways, does a day of bad's unhappiness outweight the possible benefit to others? In _that_ scenario bad would have to make others suffer quite a bit more. Uh oh math again:

(I'm doing math with suffering, this feels bad, but with big numbers it's the only way to really judge with any certainty beyond human guessing)

Let's say R = universe where happiness is removed, K = keep happiness, A = Rate that Bad affects others, e.g., Bad's affect on others/time, where negative A is a negative impact and positive A is a positive impact

I would choose the greater of valueK = (A in K * Bad lifetime left in K) and valueR = (A in R * Bad lifetime left in R)

This shows another thing: Removing happiness (also keeping) could change how much Bad affects others. For example, if Bad knew I was going to judge the whole time, maybe Bad is just holding back, and therefore "A in K" would be super far into the negatives. [deleted] ... wait

I didn't account for the fact that Bad's affect/non affect lasts longer than Bad's life. So really
valueK = (A in K when Bad alive * Bad lifetime K) + (A in K Bad not alive)
valueR = (A in R when Bad alive * Bad lifetime R) + (R in K Bad not alive)

The problem seems to be designed in a way such that there's no guarantee that Bad will change because of unhappiness, instead I'll have to just infer from my idea of how human beings work. In this sense, because of my relatively low social skills I think I would be less qualified to answer than other people. Sooo, another solution is... ask other people that I think would be more qualified....

But for now, I'd say that a lot of Bad's motivation comes from happiness. Hmm, but would motivation be replaced by something else? [Research] Oh there's a bunch of different models of motivation like the hierarchy of needs, Herzberg's two-factor theory, and EGR theory. One thing in Wikipedia's intro paragraph says that "The [cross-paradigm]paradigmatic mental state providing motivation is desire". And desire is like "should be" whereas belief is like "actually is". There's theories of desire.... Google Scholar has paywalls oof. My question is so abstract I can't really find any research on it.

Unrelated to that, how do we even know that Bad is bad? I guess it's just from the "manual" (forum post). If there's no way to know more about Bad (sounds like it because "nothing more, nothing less") OR this is a one time power (doesn't sound like it because of the "with a click of the fingers"), then it should be done the sooner the better (if it's worth it).

[I ran out of time, only partly towards an answer]

@FC-in-the-UK
> I am solely interested in the consequences of my premises (and yes I know that from a formal contradiction one can derive anything, but I very much doubt that you can find a formal contradiction in my premises).
But that's the thing. There is a formal contradiction in your premises. Let's analyze. You say in your original post that
> Mr X is a complete arsehole. He never broke any law, but he's selfish, racist, homophobic, mysoginistic, pro-Putin, he likes to humiliate people and to see others suffer.
Thus, Mr X is
P1: Confine by law AND selfish AND racist AND homophobic AND mysoginistic AND pro-putin AND likes to humiliate people AND see others suffer

> He also has never worked a single day of his life because he inherited a small fortune from his parents.
> So by any regards he doesn't deserve to be happy.
> But he does lead a life as happy as can be.
Here you say Mr X is
P2: One who leads a life as happy as can be
P3: One who has never worked a day in his life
(You also state he doesn't deserve to be happy by any regards, but that is already assuming a conclusion you wish to deduce. I won't use this against you since it doesn't matter for my purposes).

You say he leads a life as happy as can be. We must assume his happiness comes from his acts. His acts being those you mention at the beginning of the paragraph. This assumption is an enthymeme deriving from your premises. To give you an idea of what I mean: Mr X being racist AND pro-putin assumes Mr X is white. Why? Putin is white. Mr X is racist. If Mr X is not white then why would he support a man not of his race? Contradiction. This is an enthymeme.

You are proposing this thought experiment because you think there is some conflict here. You are wondering whether a man who revels in a character such as his is worthy of happiness. You are assuming he is happy, and very happy at that.

From the premises of Mr X's character we may assume that: Mr X hates or is angry with other races; Mr X hates or is angry with homosexuals; Mr X hates or is angry with women; Mr X hates or is angry with sharing anything belonging to him; Mr X hates or is angry with people; Mr X derives pleasure from humiliating people and from seeing them suffer.

Is hate and anger compatible with happiness? You say happiness are chemicals and processes in the brain, right? Same must go for hate and anger, right? Can chemicals and processes produce both states at once? Is it possible to be angry and happy at the same time? No. Mr X may not be happy and angry at the same time. He is one at a time, and what's more he must be angrier and more hating than he must be happy since racism, selfishness, homophobia originate in a state of anger and hate and only conclude in a state of anger and hate. Also, I believe you err in your words. The acts he does give him pleasure, and the sustaining of this mental state gives him happiness. But he can never sustain such a state because he is a hater of mankind and very soon he will be angry and hateful and be in a state I call misery. He will always be in discord even amongst his own race. He will have no friends, no lovers, no anything. Is this really what you call being "as happy as can be"?

From this we may deduce that Mr X is in a state of misery. This contradicts P2 (Premise Two). Now, you can close your eyes and pretend this contradiction doesn't see you because you refuse to see it, but it will still be there.

@KingRod said in #63:
> @FC-in-the-UK
>
> But that's the thing. There is a formal contradiction in your premises. Let's analyze. You say in your original post that
>
> Thus, Mr X is
> P1: Confine by law AND selfish AND racist AND homophobic AND mysoginistic AND pro-putin AND likes to humiliate people AND see others suffer
>
>
> Here you say Mr X is
> P2: One who leads a life as happy as can be
> P3: One who has never worked a day in his life
> (You also state he doesn't deserve to be happy by any regards, but that is already assuming a conclusion you wish to deduce. I won't use this against you since it doesn't matter for my purposes).
>
> You say he leads a life as happy as can be. We must assume his happiness comes from his acts. His acts being those you mention at the beginning of the paragraph. This assumption is an enthymeme deriving from your premises. To give you an idea of what I mean: Mr X being racist AND pro-putin assumes Mr X is white. Why? Putin is white. Mr X is racist. If Mr X is not white then why would he support a man not of his race? Contradiction. This is an enthymeme.
>
> You are proposing this thought experiment because you think there is some conflict here. You are wondering whether a man who revels in a character such as his is worthy of happiness. You are assuming he is happy, and very happy at that.
>
> From the premises of Mr X's character we may assume that: Mr X hates or is angry with other races; Mr X hates or is angry with homosexuals; Mr X hates or is angry with women; Mr X hates or is angry with sharing anything belonging to him; Mr X hates or is angry with people; Mr X derives pleasure from humiliating people and from seeing them suffer.
>
> Is hate and anger compatible with happiness? You say happiness are chemicals and processes in the brain, right? Same must go for hate and anger, right? Can chemicals and processes produce both states at once? Is it possible to be angry and happy at the same time? No. Mr X may not be happy and angry at the same time. He is one at a time, and what's more he must be angrier and more hating than he must be happy since racism, selfishness, homophobia originate in a state of anger and hate and only conclude in a state of anger and hate. Also, I believe you err in your words. The acts he does give him pleasure, and the sustaining of this mental state gives him happiness. But he can never sustain such a state because he is a hater of mankind and very soon he will be angry and hateful and be in a state I call misery. He will always be in discord even amongst his own race. He will have no friends, no lovers, no anything. Is this really what you call being "as happy as can be"?
>
> From this we may deduce that Mr X is in a state of misery. This contradicts P2 (Premise Two). Now, you can close your eyes and pretend this contradiction doesn't see you because you refuse to see it, but it will still be there.
Lol.

@FC-in-the-UK said in #64:
> Lol.
You really should have let this thread die a month ago. You aren't capable of reasoning or admitting error. Please, take care to produce subjective topics next time, and I shall take care to respond to objective people next time.

@KingRod said in #65:
> You really should have let this thread die a month ago. You aren't capable of reasoning or admitting error. Please, take care to produce subjective topics next time, and I shall take care to respond to objective people next time.
Yes, take care to not reply to my threads any more and everyone shall be happy :)

But I'm actually interested in your response to my observation about the definition of truth.

Let's me expand further about Godel's incompleteness theorem. Godel proved that any consistent set of axioms can't prove every true thing about integers. And also that you can't prove a system is consistent... within that system.

Actually I think that is a red herring. Instead I think the actual concept is Tarski's undefinability theorem: No sufficiently advanced system can represent its own semantics; and semantics includes truth. But that doesn't mean you can have a more powerful system describing what truth is in a less powerful system, and to me that is enough.

@StevenEmily said in #67:
> But that doesn't mean you can have a more powerful system describing what truth is in a less powerful system, and to me that is enough.
I am assuming you meant "that doesn't mean you can't" (double negative are tricky, innit?).
And yes, of course you can. But then you can't define the truth of your more powerful system, unless you use an even more powerful system, and so on.

It's turtles all the way up :D