I promised myself that I would never be satisfied with myself ..

This sounds like self-harm to me.

For clarity, I wouldn't describe it as "empathy makes me feel disgust", I would describe it as "attempts to be empathetic make me feel disgust, which gets in the way of being empathetic".

Empathy is neither feeling kindness nor disgust, empathy is feeling (not necessarily understanding) what the other person feels. Sometimes understanding or being kind can help in being empathetic, but neither is a requirement, strictly speaking.

Disgust can be empathetic, if the other is also disgusted. Otherwise it is something other than empathy.

I think it's quite in line with the attitude most porn takes.

You probably meant prefix sums instead of pairwise sums.

In any case, Bayesian reasoning is not symmetrical with respect to any given automorphism, unless the hypotheses space is.

Real markets mostly have it covered, because they have something close to [aggregated] utilons -- money, and so exchanges between 2 different goods rarely take place.

Also, any business can be seen as a "side-channel trade" -- the market value of one individual's time is often lower than the value they can produce in cooperation with others.

What if we suppose that wealth doesn't track merit that well, and accumulating 51% of wealth most likely signals the measurement error due to noise/randomness/luck?

And even inasmuch as it tracks capitalistic merit, it might not track other things we care about, which makes it problematic leaving all eggs in one basket.

What if we simply provide a magnetic field detector, aka compass, as an input device to our AI?

If that seems insufficient, how far before simulating full physics of a bird's body as-is would be sufficient? (It also seems that such simulation is completely outside of scope for AI, because it has nothing to do with intelligence per se).

Thank you, Duncan. I've never met you, but you seem very real and very existing to me. I don't quite share the same history as you, I think I got used to defensively ignoring what the world implied about me pretty early, but I am aiming to become a psychotherapist, and attempting to connect with how people actually are, rather than what I think they might be, seems central to my journey. Your post is an inspiration to me.

I must say I am quite taken aback by the condescending tone of your comment (suggesting that I am 15 years old etc).

But since you've got some upvotes I wonder if disagreement "with the current consensus" indeed was implied by my phrasing. In case it needs clarification, obviously, I suggest that nobody tries heroin. And even though this question seems much easier to answer, it was listed by the OP and so it would be helpful if he could first answer it himself.

UPD In case you're interested in my stance on the above substances, it's this:

-- Heroin is quite harmful.

-- Amphetamines are sometimes useful as prescription drugs, but I wouldn't recommend them otherwise.

-- I strongly encourage any adult to have LSD at least once, but with great care for the setting and risk-factors, such as relatives with schizophrenia etc.

But my stance is not the point. It's up to the OP to find his.