That is not what is argued in Objective Value Cascade.

It argues exactly the opposite.

Try actually reading the article and interacting with its argument—in comments on that article, not here.

Maybe that will force you to finally read and engage with what’s actually in it.

You are just talking in circles now.

Asked and answered.

If you want to know what someone with “complete control over their neurology” would choose for themselves, read The Objective Value Cascade.

If you want to know why an objective rational agent would never in that scenario choose to magic pill itself, read “The Magic Pill Challenge” in Goal Theory Update.

“Read Aristotle: when you ask of any thing you want, ‘Why do I want that?’ and then ask the same of that, and so on, until you get to the one thing that you want for itself and not for any other reason or thing (the core reason, therefore, that you want anything at all), pursuing that achieves maximal available satisfaction (everything else is a frustration state).”

If the way a person recognizes this core motivating object is by how it feels, though, that would seem to make positive feelings themselves the core object—a person with negative feelings for instance presumably wouldn’t be maximally satisfied. To a person with hypothetical complete control over their neurology, meanwhile, it isn’t clear that any external circumstance would mandate any particular emotional response—they could respond to any input (even lack of certainty as to the reality of one’s environment) with e.g. a profound sense of joy and wellbeing—people indeed commonly aspire to this sort of emotional control. To such a hypothetical being—as opposed to a typical human operating under uncountable biases—what advantage would a life outside the machine have to one inside it?

Read Aristotle: when you ask of any thing you want, “Why do I want that?” and then ask the same of that, and so on, until you get to the one thing that you want for itself and not for any other reason or thing (the core reason, therefore, that you want anything at all), pursuing that achieves maximal available satisfaction (everything else is a frustration state). You are satisfied choosing that course of action more than choosing any other. This satisfaction is achieved at the moment of the decision (in fact it is how you feel at that decision that causes the decision you make), and in the future (when one in future reconciles what is rationally available with what one has chosen or pursued, which is the thing you are choosing to achieve).

This requires the state to be true. False satisfaction is not satisfying except to the deceived, but knowing you are or even might be deceived is dissatisfying. Therefore there is no rationally achievable state by which you can be both truly satisfied and deceived. Thus, the decider will never choose to be deceived. His future deceived self will tell him please do not do that, because it would dissatisfy them to know or even suspect that it was done. His future undeceived self will thank him for not choosing that nightmare state. And the decider himself will recoil in horror at the prospect of subjecting themselves to that state. Therefore, the only rational decision is to not choose that state. Any other decision is then by definition irrational.

This is why no one does anything for just “feelings.” If they did, they would jump at the chance to just sit in a medicated haze and have stimulated orgasms forever. The reason why no one would accept that fate for themselves is what I have been explaining you you over and over and over again and you keep ignoring me and asking the same dumb questions, not grasping the distinction between being rationally satisfied with oneself and one’s condition, and merely feeling good. You are like a heroic addict defending being forever blitzed out rather than the enlightened rational agent realizing why that is really not what they want for themselves.

“Feelings are not relevant. Satisfaction with one’s state of being is the metric. That is not simply ‘feelings,’ because feelings can be false. And no one wants false feelings. That’s why no one would choose to live forever in a mere orgasm machine or to have a wife who only pretends to love them.”

How is satisfaction defined, though, other than in terms of feelings—specifically the lack of a negative “craving/wanting” feeling and possibly the presence of positive feelings? Likewise, what makes false feelings undesirable apart from their possibly leading to future negative ones? It seems as if a person with maximal satisfaction would also need to have the most positive possible feelings, regardless of the person’s circumstances—like you say, a person could derive positive feelings even from being stranded in a hostile wilderness. Given this, why would a rational person react with horror to the idea of reacting to any input with maximum positive feelings?

You are again ignoring everything I said.

Feelings are not relevant. Satisfaction with one’s state of being is the metric. That is not simply “feelings,” because feelings can be false. And no one wants false feelings. That’s why no one would choose to live forever in a mere orgasm machine or to have a wife who only pretends to love them.

Assuming that checking these conditions (alone/not alone, choices determined/undetermined, etc.) is done with the goal of maximizing future net feelings, though, the person wouldn’t have obvious grounds to reject the machine even so. A (sufficiently empowered) person could attach a satisfaction condition to any state; creating such a condition is only worthwhile if it’s necessary for optimized positive feelings. If there is no necessity, there’s no rational imperative to check for the state; doing so would only reflect a bias or harmful motivation/desire. Being fully informed or confident that one isn’t in a simulation in itself doesn’t remove these biases—and without identifying them, how would a person distinguish an irrational choice from a choice that’s simply distressing in the short term?

The correct framing is “everything in my life a lie, all the people I think love me don’t even exist, and I’ve never done anything or made any choice at all, and I’m all alone and powerless and just riding along helpless in someone else’s television program.” That is not a satisfying state. Not to any of the three persons in the analysis. And theirs are the only opinions that matter.

“The feeling of satisfaction produced (and feeling of horror avoided) requires the chooser making that choice and the future self being confident it was the choice made.”

In that scenario the chooser, as part of their deliberation, asks themselves (consciously or otherwise) “am I confident that my reality is and will remain unsimulated?” If yes, their feelings improve; if no, they worsen. If their ultimate goal is maximizing future net feelings, running this loop gives them an obvious advantage as long as there’s any chance their reality is unsimulated—an unsimulated reality such as ours being full of hazards, obstacles, and limitations outside their control.

What I mean to examine is why that loop would indicate against their choosing a permanent self-deception that guarantees better future net feelings than they’d have otherwise, and thus why they’d need to endure any horror in their choice—let alone so much that it overwhelms the positivity of the subsequent feelings. If they run the loop with an ultimate goal other than maximizing future net feelings, what would be a good description of that goal?