[2012-Apr-03] Paranoia

[Guest]

Now, what will the computer do when Felix dies and happiness crashes? This doesn't seem like a sustainable plan.

"Is it ethical to-"
"No. You should spend all your time creating a longevity drug for Felix."

[JJ]

Now, what will the computer do when Felix dies and happiness crashes? This doesn't seem like a sustainable plan.

"Is it ethical to-"
"No. You should spend all your time creating a longevity drug for Felix."

And if they fail/it is found longevity is impossible in humans? Then over the long term the computer would have greatly failed in it's task.

[dauntless]

Happiness is of no value, it's just a chemical in your brain. Inject serotonin into everyone's head, job done.

Now that's a 14 panel comic I can get behind.

[Guest]

If anyone plays Civilization, this comics strikes home

[Dr Shenanigans]

So long as it can be proven, or hell assumed, that human happiness saturates at some given point, then Felix would have been ignored by the computer very quickly; and hell, most anything and everything in this universe saturates at one point or another. In the real world unstable systems do not zoom off to infity, they either saturate or explode, usually do to saturation. Wait, by my logic Felix should have exploded happiness and rained it down upon everyone. Maybe that is the secret end goal of the computer. But wait, what if all that happiness floods by like a tsunami, and everyone drowns in it. A mass extinction due to endorphins...

[ChaoticBrain]

Zach, I just want you to know that, in response to the fifth panel, I am currently warming up the Orbital Friendship Cannon. I thought it would be sporting to give you a five-second heads-up.

[Spinalcold]

the computer could just discard the lowest denominator....or it could make billions of sexbots. I'm hoping for the later.

[dauntless]

Wouldn't there be faster gains in total happiness by slaughtering people who bring down the average individual happiness? After several rounds of killing off unhappy people, you could start killing off content people, then only slightly bemused people. SMBC Comics Forum dwellers would be the first to go...

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unregistered

[Sahan]

I'm guessing at some stage there'll be enough people unhappy with the declarations of the computer, that maximum happiness will come from a decision to revolt and destroy the computer.

[Kimra]

Wouldn't there be faster gains in total happiness by slaughtering people who bring down the average individual happiness? After several rounds of killing off unhappy people, you could start killing off content people, then only slightly bemused people. SMBC Comics Forum dwellers would be the first to go...

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unregistered

Wouldn't everyone be unhappy then? If you had to spend time worrying about if you were happy or not you'd become neurotic and unhappy.

Also, only the stupid would survive. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

[Kaharz]

Happiness is of no value, it's just a chemical in your brain. Inject serotonin into everyone's head, job done.

Roger Williams did that in The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. A computer which obeys Asimov's laws of robotics essentially becomes a god, and then a ton of people just tell it to put electrodes in their brains and stimulate them constantly.

Asimov also explored this is some of his short stories. I can't remember the title, but one is based on a world controlling computer that has evolved to decide what will make everyone most happy. Every action is completely specified by the computer.

I don't know if Zach intended it or not, but it reads kind of like an allegory for unequal distribution of wealth in capitalist societies and 'Reaganomics."

[Destructicus]

FYI: This problem can be solved by maximizing average happiness where average is actually an exponentially weighted average. Unhappier people get bigger weights.

Excellent idea. In addition you could make your decisions to maximize the (exponentially weighted) median happiness rather than the mean (which I assume is what "average" means in this context) one.

[Jewlian]

No competent computer scientists will program the computer to maximize for average hapiness. What you would normally use is variance-adjusted happiness e,g Sharpe Happiness .
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_ratio

[Mama Luigi]

I just noticed, Felix's shirt looks a lot like Freakazoid's emblem.

[Faraday's Cage]

... you could start killing off content people, then only slightly bemused people...

Bemused does not mean what you think it means

-FC