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Submission to the [Immortality Institute|http://www.imminst.org]'s [book project|http://www.imminst.org/book].

the ultimate goal of an agent is positive experience

the only reason for choosing one course of action over another is the expectation (rational or not) that there is some significant chance that it will lead to a more positive experience than the alternatives
(not necessarily a good experience, but better than the alternatives)

what counts as a positive experience varies widely in humans

however there is also a great deal of commonality due to our common genetic heritage
generally people value (almost by definition) pleasure, satisfaction, mutual respect, joy, fun, ... over the respective opposites

rational choice theory
decision theory


The Q Factor

Imagine that some sufficiently advanced technology (indistiguishable from magic) allows you to monitor the quality of your subjective experience. Whenever you are curious you could glance at the display to see a quantative measure of how good (or bad) you felt at any given time, say a number from -10 to +10. If it happens to read +10 it means that you have never felt better and that you are having the best time of your life at that moment. A reading of zero means that whatever you are experiencing is equivalent (no better nor worse) than experiencing nothing at all, as you would in a dreamless sleep or a coma or death. Let's call that number the Q factor, for quality.

All other values that this hypothetical monitor could display are determined by these two reference points corresponding to maximum pleaseure and oblivion. The Q factor for a particular experience is defined such that you would have no preference between two subjective experiences if
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