Yet for moments after the operation, you would be wishing that you had chosen Drug A instead.
Why?
I can care about the whole 4d block. The journey not just the destination.
Suppose that the universe would cease to exist at some point in the future. And you will be alive to the end. At the last instant, nothing you can do can effect reality in any way. The future is empty either way. Therefore all past decisions were equally good?
No. When judging a decision, we look out over all the things effected, whether past or future.
Consider a hypothetical: there are two drugs we could use to execute prisoners convinced with the death penalty. One of them causes excruciating pain, the other does not, but costs more.
Would we feel that we would rather use the torture drug later? After all, the dude is dead, so he doesn’t care either way.
I have a pretty strong intuition that those drugs are not similar. Same thing with the anesthesia example.
Well, I didn’t expect this to be the majority opinion. I guess I was too in my head.
But to explain my rationale: The effects of the two drugs only differ during the operation, their end results are identical. So after the operation, barring external records like bank account information, there is no way to even tell which drug I took, their result would be the same. Taking external records into consideration, the extra dollar in the bank would certainly be more welcomed.
The memory-inhibiting part was supposed to preclude the journey consideration. From a post-operation perspective, there is no experience of a “journey” to talk about. Now it’s clear to me that people would evaluate it regardless of the memory part.
I don’t think the end result is identical. If you take B, you now have evidence that, if a similar situation arises again, you won’t have to experience excruciating pain. Your past actions and decisions are relevant evidence of future actions and decisions. If you take drug A, your chance of experiencing excruciating pain at some point in the future goes up (at least your subjective estimation of the probability should probably go up at least a bit.) I would pay a dollar to lower my best rational estimate of the chance of something like that happening to me—wouldn’t you?
Why?
I can care about the whole 4d block. The journey not just the destination.
Suppose that the universe would cease to exist at some point in the future. And you will be alive to the end. At the last instant, nothing you can do can effect reality in any way. The future is empty either way. Therefore all past decisions were equally good?
No. When judging a decision, we look out over all the things effected, whether past or future.
Drug B without regret.
I agree with this.
Consider a hypothetical: there are two drugs we could use to execute prisoners convinced with the death penalty. One of them causes excruciating pain, the other does not, but costs more.
Would we feel that we would rather use the torture drug later? After all, the dude is dead, so he doesn’t care either way.
I have a pretty strong intuition that those drugs are not similar. Same thing with the anesthesia example.
It’s like asking whether it makes sense to do fun things with 3 years old kids, when two years later they won’t remember any of it.
Well, I didn’t expect this to be the majority opinion. I guess I was too in my head.
But to explain my rationale: The effects of the two drugs only differ during the operation, their end results are identical. So after the operation, barring external records like bank account information, there is no way to even tell which drug I took, their result would be the same. Taking external records into consideration, the extra dollar in the bank would certainly be more welcomed.
The memory-inhibiting part was supposed to preclude the journey consideration. From a post-operation perspective, there is no experience of a “journey” to talk about. Now it’s clear to me that people would evaluate it regardless of the memory part.
I don’t think the end result is identical. If you take B, you now have evidence that, if a similar situation arises again, you won’t have to experience excruciating pain. Your past actions and decisions are relevant evidence of future actions and decisions. If you take drug A, your chance of experiencing excruciating pain at some point in the future goes up (at least your subjective estimation of the probability should probably go up at least a bit.) I would pay a dollar to lower my best rational estimate of the chance of something like that happening to me—wouldn’t you?