You can make a case that charisma only matters in contrast to its lack, and perhaps beauty is the same although I'm not as certain, but intelligence has an intrinsic value that ought to be evident by the fact that we built a technological civilization with it.

That's a good point, I'll just say that no one will perceive themselves or their friends as intelligent, except relative to their competitors.

Those qualities are measured relative to us, present humans. He's saying the Ems will be much smarter, beautiful, and charismatic, compared to humans in 2016.

>wouldn't the slightest dip or peak in subjective well-being feel like a life-altering crisis?

Well that's much more debatable. I think to some degree suffering and pleasure are on an objective scale. Maybe it has to do with how much dopamine or pain nerves are triggered, probably it's much more complicated than that. Certainly I would give a lot to live in a world where there was no risk of getting some illness or accident that could cause intense pain or suffering, yet otherwise everything else was exactly the same. Wouldn't you?

> I would give a lot to live in a world where there was no risk of getting some illness or accident that could cause intense pain or suffering, yet otherwise everything else was exactly the same. Wouldn't you?

Not really. I would argue that life is suffering, or at least entails suffering. Without physical suffering, you would suffer psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually - perhaps to a far greater degree. I strongly suspect that the confusion and malaise which afflicts modern man, compared to his tribal ancestors, is correlated with a reduction in physical hardship.

So no - while removing a specific source of physical suffering may sometimes be prudent, in general I would not sacrifice anything I truly value in a vain attempt to avoid suffering in general.

You're missing something by bringing up "human desire". Within the post-human fantasy there's no reason to not fix the bug that your happiness is only measured relative to other's misery. Or to present an altered set of peers to each individual so that they feel relatively successful, or any other number of solutions that become trivial once you accept the premise.

Oh, you and your pesky "wait, but value isn't absolute" observations.

https://archive.org/stream/lectureonnotiono00lloy#page/34/mo...

Failure to understand the relativity of value is perhaps the primary logical fallacy I see every day. There was an article on this site recently about someone doing their part to "promote equality" by helping someone receive an "elite education" (who otherwise couldn't have had one). Yet isn't the concept of an elite education - by definition - something that can only exist when some people are denied the opportunity to have one?

In reality, patting oneself on the back for helping one person to succeed is exactly equivalent to hoping another person fails. The human instinct for hierarchy is deep and generally unacknowledged.

Quite. One of only a very large class of such failures of understanding and comprehension.

There's something to be said for seeing, say, that everyone capable of benefitting from a high-quality education gets same. But that excludes consideration of those who wouldn't benefit (at least educationally) from the opportunity.

... there being other modes of benefitting from education, including networking, contacts, and exposure to the inner sanctum.