22 January, 2016

Kissing, Self-Modification, & CEV

I have a strange relationship with kissing. I don't consider myself a good kisser, I don't particularly enjoy kissing, and I tend to feel a bit squicky about kissing.

This is odd. I don't really know anyone else who shares similar feelings about kissing on all these fronts. I've mostly dealt with it by avoiding kissing when appropriate, and 'doing my duty' when needed. Most either don't notice or at least pretend not to notice, but there have been a few that have questioned me about it.

It started when I was young -- younger, I think, than I can reliably remember. I think that my mother held her hand in front of my eyes whenever people would kiss on television, and this gradually turned into a habit of averting my eyes whenever an onscreen kiss would occur. To this day, if I am watching television and two actors kiss, I am immediately taken out of the story and have to consciously use willpower to not turn my head away from the screen. For me, kissing ruins otherwise good stories, though I do look past it when I can. (Similar to how I notice and am annoyed by superheroes that ignore newton's laws of motion or space battles with audible explosions that should be silent; I look past these as well and try to engross myself in the story whenever possible, but these things always take me out of the storyline at least temporarily.)

This is especially weird when watching porn. I have no problem seeing many sex acts, but as soon as the actors kiss, I feel squicky. I suppose this is because I was trained to look away from kisses, but I never had a parent make me look away from actual sex acts, since I never had a parent in the room when those sex acts occurred on screen.

And then there was N—. She wasn't the first I'd kissed, but was still one of my first. She broke up with me for one reason or another, as young people sometimes will, and I asked her why. Looking back, it wasn't a particularly good question to ask, because she was annoyed with me at the time, and was very likely to lie. But for some reason, when she said it was because I was a terrible kisser, I believed her. I was barely a teenager at the time. Now, I know better. She was just being mean, or at the very least rude. But the thought stuck in my head anyway, and never really went away.

Of course, there's also the issue of my teeth. Today, I like my teeth. I like their distinctiveness and I have grown quite fond of the shape of the hole I make when biting into an apple. But it may be easy to understand why I haven't always felt this way. Those who know me in person will no doubt have noticed that one of my front teeth skews forward at a slight angle. It's significant enough to not be easily missed by anyone who talks with me in person, let alone any who kiss me. For a long time, I felt embarrassed by it, and even though I now like it for its many benefits (distinctive whistling sounds, ease of dental identification should I die in a fire), it is nonetheless something I consciously think of whenever I kiss someone, and that's not really a good feeling.

So today, whenever I kiss someone on the mouth, it is quite a conscious experience. It is never 'in the moment'. Like with tv, if I kiss someone lips to lips, I am very much aware of what I am doing, how I am doing it, and what the other person might be thinking of the experience. It is not sexy, nor romantic, nor in any way a positive experience for me. It takes me out of the experience and very much turns me off. Nevertheless, I usually just soldier through it, which isn't particularly difficult to do. I do kiss; I just don't really enjoy it.

What makes all of this even more strange is that I'm the sort of person who will kiss new people I meet on the cheek. It's a kind of greeting that I've inherited from my family, for whom kissing is the most appropriate way to greet any person you're saying hello or goodbye to. But as this is the cheek, not the mouth, it doesn't bother me at all.

In fact, most kissing does not bother me. I enjoy kissing others, and being kissed in return, just as much as I love close contact with friends and family. So long as it is not on the mouth, I'm very much in favor of kissing, whether it is with a partner or a family member. But the thought of kissing someone I'm romantically involved with on the mouth.... Even as I write that last sentence, I found myself shudder involuntarily (though only slightly).

It's not really a rational preference. I get that. I'm sure that with practice and a little self-reflection, it's the kind of thing that I could 'fix'. But I've never really felt a desire to fix it, just like I have never really felt a desire to 'fix' my distaste of brussels sprouts, or the fact that I'm sapioromantic rather than someone who feels romantic attraction to others for more physical qualities. It's never really been a problem -- at least it hasn't been in the past.

But, for some people, kissing is important. Important enough that my enjoyment of kissing (on the mouth) would be required for them to enjoy any kind of romantic contact. So the question arises: what level of brain modification am I okay with?

When I first learned about the horrors of industrial agriculture, I felt compelled to abstain from eating meat. When I fully realized the impact I could make through effective altruism, I began donating a significant amount of my income. When I learned about my own invisible privilege, I took steps to try to make that privilege more visible so that I could act more appropriately. Each of these were a beneficial type of information hazard that spurred me to action once I learned the underlying truth of reality. In each case, I felt it was appropriate to modify the normal behavior of my own brain so that I could become a better person. I anticipate making many more such changes in the future, and a large part of my idle thoughts go towards predicting what my coherent extrapolated volition might be once I become aware of more beneficial information hazards. (Infohazards are quite well named, given that they demand immediate self-modification when viewed, even if that change is 'beneficial', since, from the point of view of the pre-changed mind, that change is, by its very definition, hazardous.)

Yet this is a peculiar situation. This is no beneficial infohazard. This case is more like someone asking me to self-modify to enjoy the taste of brussels sprouts. It is a lateral change; not a positive one (from my perspective). Sure, were I to self-modify to enjoy kissing, it would give the other person utility -- and, in a way, I'd gain utility by creating a new way for me to enjoy reality (plus, I'd gain the utility from enjoying being with this person) -- but if I were to accept this kind of self modification as being acceptable, then I should also be okay with self-modifying to like brussels sprouts.

In Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, there is a cow that wants to be eaten. Much has been written about the idea of a rational being that places utility in others doing something to it that we would otherwise consider harmful, but I'd like to focus on the part where this being was effectively made to desire something that we would ordinarily expect it to not desire at all. In the book, others made the cow to be born with such a desire -- but imagine, instead, that it self-modified to have such a desire.

If I were to be taken as a slave, and had access to an oracle AI that informed me that I'd be a slave for the remainder of my life, then would it be rational for me to self-modify my utility function to desire being enslaved? If yes, then surely I should also be willing to self-modify to enjoy brussels sprouts or enjoy kissing. But I think the answer is no, which doesn't necessarily mean I should or shouldn't self-modify for lateral utility changes.

I'm a consequentialist, but I have no desire to permanently enter Nozick's experience machine, mostly because I place some value on being hierarchically higher when choosing between a simulation and reality (or between two simulations). (Friendship is Optimal is a horror story, no matter what anyone else tells you. It is most definitely not in my CEV.) So if entering the experience machine is bad, then doesn't that imply that self-modifying to enjoy brussels sprouts would also be bad?

I don't know. I'm not sure I'm really thinking straight about this, because I'm tempted to think that maybe self-modifying to be vegetarian would be bad from my own point of view, and is only justified because of others' points of view (like the harmed animals). But if that is the justification for why it is good to become vegetarian, then I shouldn't I also self-modify anything that would cause more good overall? Like maybe undergoing plastic surgery, or losing weight, or having less extreme political views, or even wearing orange less often. Let's not bring up gay conversion therapy, which is much more serious than these other ideas. Yet even these other ideas seem terrible to me. They seem obviously wrong, and so something has surely gone awry in my thinking on this topic.

(In any case, I should point out here that none of the above thinking applies to situation of getting children to try out vegetables they don't at first like. From what I understand, humans evolved to have children find sweet things pleasurable and bitter things unpleasurable at a first taste, but to grow to like bitter things after repeated eatings, so that parents can get children to eat the farmed vegetables while still having them avoid poisoning themselves on wild plants. On this theory, children are primed to learn to eat new bitter tastes after a few tastings, even though adults have a much more difficult time of learning to like the taste of something they previously disliked.)

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