One model / framing / hypothesis of my preferences is that:

I wouldn't / don't value living in a loop multiple times* because there's nothing new experienced. So even an infinite life in the sense of looping an infinite amount of times has finite value. Actually, it has the same value as the size of the loop: after 1 loop, marginal loops have no value. (Intuition pump: from within the loop, you can’t tell how many times you’ve been going through the loop so far.)

*explanation of a loop: at some point in the future my life becomes indistinguishable from a previous state, and my life replays exactly the same way from that point onwards

Also, for me to consider a life infinite, it’s important that identity be preserved, not just continuity. Among other things, that means past memories need to be preserved (or at least integrated in some ways), which means that the information content of the person will keep growing, and so the amount of matter needed to encode the information will also keep growing (assuming a fixed finite information-to-matter ratio) (ie. Being immortal means you will one day be a Jupiter brain).

Given that I (claim that I) prefer an immortal life of torture over any finite life, people tend to try to come up with scenarios that would make me change my mind. The problem with maximum torture is that it looks static / it might be an experience with a very short loop (0 to a few seconds), so it doesn’t actually constitute immortality. To be considered immortality (by me, under my view of identity), the torture would need to be remembered, and so the subjective experience different over time (although still always extremely painful of course).

My thinking was that any infinite life (defined in a way where a loop's size is not infinite, but just the size of the loop) had infinite value (to me).

But now I’m thinking maybe there are non-loop infinite lives that also have finite value. Like, maybe counting the natural numbers for eternity has a finite value because you're just executing the same simple pattern, and not executing new patterns. Executing this same function is loop-like at a higher level of abstraction. So while (/ just like) a loop has 0 marginal value, maybe those more abstract-loop also have diminishing return to a point where the integral of the value over infinity of those more abstract loops also converge (ie. experiencing them forever has finite value).

Note: This would still mean I prefer some form of everlasting torture to any finite life, it just means the torture would need to be more creative.

Just a thought I had while writing my last post. I haven't evaluated it much yet. But this is pretty far from my views up-to-now.

x-post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/deathfocusethics/posts/2113683138801222/