For convenience I refer hereafter to an the-future-is-solely-comprised-of-negative-value scenario as an “AIMS” scenario and to a I-trigger-my-suicide-switch-when-the-future-has-net-positive-expected-value as an “OOPS” scenario.
Things I more-or-less agree with:
I don’t really see why positing “solely of negative value” is necessary for AIMS scenarios. If I’m confident that my future unavoidably contains net negative value, that should be enough to conclude that opting out of that future is a more valuable choice than signing up for it. But since it seems to be an important part of your definition, I accept it for the sake of discussion.
I agree that suffering is not the same thing as negative value, and therefore that we aren’t necessarily talking about suffering here.
I agree that a AIMS scenario has a negligible but non-zero chance of occurring. I personally can’t imagine one, but that’s just a limit of my imagination and not terribly relevant.
I agree that it’s possible to put safeguards on a suicide switch such that an OOPS scenario has a negligible chance of occurring.
Things I disagree with:
You seem to be suggesting either that it’s possible to make the OOPS scenario likelihood not just negligible, but zero. I see no reason to believe that’s true. (Perhaps you aren’t actually saying this.)
Alternatively, you might be suggesting that the OOPS scenario is negligible, non-zero, and not worthy of attention, whereas the AIMS scenario is negligible, non-zero, and worthy of attention. I certainly agree that IF that’s true, then it trivially follows that giving people a suicide switch creates more expected value than not doing so in all scenarios worthy of attention. But I see no reason to believe that’s true either.
You seem to be suggesting either that it’s possible to make the OOPS scenario likelihood not just negligible, but zero.
Specific versions of “OOPS”. I don’t intend to categorize all of them that way.
Alternatively, you might be suggesting that the OOPS scenario is negligible, non-zero, and not worthy of attention, whereas the AIMS scenario is negligible, non-zero, and worthy of attention.
Well, no. It has more to do with the expected cost of failing to account for either variety at least in principle. An OOPS scenario being fulfilled means the end of potential and the cessation of gained utility. An AIMS scenario being fulfilled means the aversion of constantly negative utility. (We can drop the “solely” so long as the ‘net’ is kept.)
For convenience I refer hereafter to an the-future-is-solely-comprised-of-negative-value scenario as an “AIMS” scenario and to a I-trigger-my-suicide-switch-when-the-future-has-net-positive-expected-value as an “OOPS” scenario.
Things I more-or-less agree with:
I don’t really see why positing “solely of negative value” is necessary for AIMS scenarios. If I’m confident that my future unavoidably contains net negative value, that should be enough to conclude that opting out of that future is a more valuable choice than signing up for it. But since it seems to be an important part of your definition, I accept it for the sake of discussion.
I agree that suffering is not the same thing as negative value, and therefore that we aren’t necessarily talking about suffering here.
I agree that a AIMS scenario has a negligible but non-zero chance of occurring. I personally can’t imagine one, but that’s just a limit of my imagination and not terribly relevant.
I agree that it’s possible to put safeguards on a suicide switch such that an OOPS scenario has a negligible chance of occurring.
Things I disagree with:
You seem to be suggesting either that it’s possible to make the OOPS scenario likelihood not just negligible, but zero. I see no reason to believe that’s true. (Perhaps you aren’t actually saying this.)
Alternatively, you might be suggesting that the OOPS scenario is negligible, non-zero, and not worthy of attention, whereas the AIMS scenario is negligible, non-zero, and worthy of attention. I certainly agree that IF that’s true, then it trivially follows that giving people a suicide switch creates more expected value than not doing so in all scenarios worthy of attention. But I see no reason to believe that’s true either.
Specific versions of “OOPS”. I don’t intend to categorize all of them that way.
Well, no. It has more to do with the expected cost of failing to account for either variety at least in principle. An OOPS scenario being fulfilled means the end of potential and the cessation of gained utility. An AIMS scenario being fulfilled means the aversion of constantly negative utility. (We can drop the “solely” so long as the ‘net’ is kept.)