X-Message-Number: 10181
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 09:22:00 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10176 - #10178

Hi everyone!

I will begin with an important announcement for those who subscribe to
PERIASTRON:

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

The next PERIASTRON will again be done by dot matrix, and I still do not
have my subscriber records. (My things should have been sent to me
in April 1998. They have still not yet arrived!!!!). I have reconstructed
those records and hope that the result gets almost all those who are
subscribing. If anyone is missing an issue, please send email or otherwise
write to me. If you KNOW anyone who is missing an issue, please have
them do the same. For those who somehow receive this message without 
having any email capability, my address is 12 Busby Street, O'Connor 
ACT 2602, AUSTRALIA. Phone number 61 (Australia code) - 262-57-4411.
The PERIASTRON address in Half Moon Bay remains valid, but it is cleared
only once a month and mail to that address will reach me, but with a 
delay.

Needless to say, I'm not at all pleased with my movers, but what's done
is done. I hope to have my things by the time of the next PERIASTRON,
and so be able to get a much more accurate subscriber list. And print it
up by laserwriter, of course.

And as for "happiness" and "feel-good", with a bit on weighting. First of
all, it's possible to find brain centers for "feel-good" but not for
happiness. Simply identifying "feel-good" with happiness does not work
mainly because the brain centers involved respond only to immediate 
pleasures and satisfactions. This seems to me much too low for the 
idea people have of happiness: are we happy if we have a full stomach?

As for the idea of weighting happiness and trying to obtain a weighted
maximum, two problems arise. By the definition of weighting (if we aren't
simply being circular here) we are saying that a sufficiently strong
happiness which lasts the next day only will be preferable to a much 
more long lasting but weaker one. Sure, sufficiently strong may have to
be unimaginably, fantastically strong, but if the pleasures of tomorrow
have any value compared to those of next week then this problem still
arises. Weighting doesn't escape it at all. (I think of this as an
integral from 0 to infinity. It's very clear that one function which
rises very high near 0 but then descends to near 0 for the rest of all
time can still have a larger integral than one which is larger 
for the rest of time but does not show that initial large increase. And
however you apply the weights, unless you attach 0 weight to some times
and periods, you can't really get away from the possibility of early
pleasure wiping out the relevance of later pain). The second problem
is that what makes us happy changes with time; this will raise problems
about acting for the future, almost inevitably. To effectively USE
this criterion requires us to predict our own future. That is not easy.
And if we retreat a little and say that we "ought to act" so as to 
maximize our weighted happiness, we haven't really dealt with the
implementation problem at all, we've just declared that we ought to
do it well. Useless declaration. 

I do agree with Bob Ettinger on one central issue. This is a much more
complex subject than most people who speak glibly about happiness
realize.

		Best for all, and long long life,

			Thomas Donaldson

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