The first time I read Torture vs. Specks about a year ago I didn't read a single comment because I assumed the article was making a point that simply multiplying can sometimes get you the wrong answer to a problem. I seem to have had a different "obvious answer" in...
A little background on myself first – I am currently studying to become involved with aging rejuvenation therapies like SENS. This requires learning quite a lot about molecular biology. Which is fine, because I find cell biology quite interesting. The problem is naturally that textbooks and technical literature on the...
For the last several months I've had increasing troubles with motivation to work. Reading dense technical papers, writing, and exercise were all much more difficult to prompt myself into starting and completing. I decided to try making a plan for my day the night before about two weeks back to...
Why wouldn't living forever be just like any other scenario where a good thing is multiplied by infinity? The novelty would wear off just like chocolate or sex. Things are "good" because they are scarce. Never-ending anything would become a burden.
If I get tired of eating chocolate or having sex it is because I want to do something else. I can't really 'do' anything besides living (death isn't me doing something because I no longer exist). We are also programmed to only want a certain amount of sex and chocolate, but we are for the most part programmed to want life as long as we can get it. Life also has a... (read more)
More polite, but probably less accurate. I could be wrong, but it was a conscious decision to word it that way
Death is the occurrence of life being lost, the event has value insofar as the living being had value.
If one wants to continue to exist, getting rid of the state of nonexistence seems like a fairly reasonable goal for that person to pursue. I want to exist, regardless of the fact that nonexistence is itself painless.
I consider the loss of everything a person is to be 'bad' because I value the unique intricacies of each person. I attribute value there because I find that complexity mind-blowingly incredible. And I think it is sad when something so incredible and unique goes away forever.
Also I want to point out that you don't actually have a reason (at least not that you've stated) for why you think you don't want to live forever, you just say that you find the desire "odd" without explanation.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone on here claim that biological immortality will fix all the problems of the world, just that reducing death is a good thing and that we should definitely do it if we can. Because the loss of the massive complexity that is a human being is really, really bad.
I've asked quite a few people this question, even older people. I don't have wider statistics on it (maybe you do and if so I'd be interested in seeing them) but the people I ask very rarely say they would not like to live longer if they could stay young and be with their friends and families. I have even been told yes by some very religious people in their seventies.
What are your main concerns?
I hadn't seen this before. Hanson's conception of intelligence actually seems much simpler and more plausible than how I had previously imagined it. I think 'intelligence' can easily act as a Semantic Stopsign because it feels like a singular entity through the experience of consciousness, but actually may be quite modular as Hanson suggests.
Wasn't the idea to not be sated until the end of the day and thus have a clearer head and be more productive? I'm not concerned about losing weight, which I have heard skipping dinner is pretty good for.
Same. I'm completely fine if I skip lunch though. I think I might try doing that regularly and see how it goes.
The first time I read Torture vs. Specks about a year ago I didn't read a single comment because I assumed the article was making a point that simply multiplying can sometimes get you the wrong answer to a problem. I seem to have had a different "obvious answer" in mind.
And don't get me wrong, I generally agree with the idea that math can do better than moral intuition in deciding questions of ethics. Take this example from Eliezer’s post Circular Altruism which made me realize that I had assumed wrong:
... (read 595 more words →)Suppose that a disease, or a monster, or a war, or something, is killing people. And suppose you only have enough resources
A little background on myself first – I am currently studying to become involved with aging rejuvenation therapies like SENS.
This requires learning quite a lot about molecular biology. Which is fine, because I find cell biology quite interesting. The problem is naturally that textbooks and technical literature on the subject often make very little effort to be interesting.
Many of the books I’ve been reading lately are largely lacking in energy. And I was finding my mind was often drifting away from what I was reading and generally just not enjoying the process. Which was bad, because I need to spend a lot of time doing it.
I asked myself, do I hate learning... (read 740 more words →)
For the last several months I've had increasing troubles with motivation to work. Reading dense technical papers, writing, and exercise were all much more difficult to prompt myself into starting and completing. I decided to try making a plan for my day the night before about two weeks back to see if it would help me get the things I wanted to do done. So every night before I go to bed I've been writing up a schedule for the next day, detailing what exactly I want to accomplish for the day and when I intend to go do it.
This has actually worked incredibly well for me in helping with my motivation... (read 248 more words →)
The difference is that life, given an infinite amount of time also has an infinite amount of options for things one can do. There are enough things to do forever, the only question is whether the specific individual will keep thinking of things that they want to do. The crux of our disagreement seems to be that you think people would get bored with literally everything if they lived long enough and I think that most people would find something worthwhile in the infinite possibilities. But neither of us have lived very long (cosmically speaking) so it is difficult to really know how we will feel if we live to be 500,... (read more)