Are you so sure about that? If the number is large enough, it’s easily conceivable that at some point in your effectively infinite lifespan, you will come across a situation where that minor annoyance changes what might have been a perfectly good 50 years into 50 years of hell. So either you’ve wound up with mild scale insensitivity, a significant discount rate, or a rejection of additivity of negends.
I’m not saying I’d be better off having picked it. For the vast majority of numbers, I absolutely would not be. [EDIT: Well, assuming no knock-on effects from the torture, which EY’s initial formulation assumed.]
I’m saying it’s probably what I would, in fact, pick, if I were somehow in the epistemic state of being offered that choice. Yes, scale insensitivity and discounting play a role here, as does my confidence that I’m actually being offered an arbitrarily large number of annual minor annoyances (and the associated years of life).
Of course, it depends somewhat on the framing of the question. For example, if you tortured me for half an hour and said “OK, I can either keep doing that for the next 50 years, or I can stop doing that and annually annoy you mildly for the rest of your immortal life,” I would definitely choose the latter. (Really, I’d probably agree to anything that included stopping the torture and didn’t violate some sacred value of mine, and quite likely I’d agree to most things that did violate my sacred values. Pain is like that.)
Yosarian2 keeps framing the question in terms of “what would you choose?” rather than “what would leave you better off?”, and then responding to selections of torture (which make sense in EY’s framing) with incredulity that anyone would actually choose torture.
At some point, fighting over the framing of the problem isn’t worth my time: f they insist on asking a (relatively trivial) epistemic question about my choices, and insist on ignoring the (more interesting) question of what would leave me better off, at some point I just decide to answer the question they asked and be done with it.
This is similar to my response to many trolley questions: faced with that choice, what I would actually do is probably hesitate ineffectually, allowing the 5 people to die. But the more interesting question is what I believe I ought to do.
Well… ideally, what you choose is what would leave you better off, and is chosen with this in mind. What you do ought to be what you ought to do, and what you ought to do ought to be what you do. Anything out of line with this either damages you unnecessarily or acknowledges that the you that might have desired the ought-choice is dead.
Yes, ideally, I would choose what would leave me better off, and what I do ought to be what I ought to do, and what I ought to do ought to be what I do. Also, I ought to do what I ought to do, and various other formulations of this thought. And yes, not doing what I ought to do has negative consequences relative to doing what I ought to do, which is precisely what makes what I ought to do what I ought to do in the first place.
the you that might have desired the ought-choice is dead.
This, on the other hand, makes no sense to me at all.
I’m also the sort of person who believes he has been dead for billions of years. Basically—if someone exists at some point and does not at another, they have died. We change over time; we throw off a chain of subtly different dead selves.
Are you so sure about that? If the number is large enough, it’s easily conceivable that at some point in your effectively infinite lifespan, you will come across a situation where that minor annoyance changes what might have been a perfectly good 50 years into 50 years of hell. So either you’ve wound up with mild scale insensitivity, a significant discount rate, or a rejection of additivity of negends.
I agree with you entirely.
I’m not saying I’d be better off having picked it. For the vast majority of numbers, I absolutely would not be. [EDIT: Well, assuming no knock-on effects from the torture, which EY’s initial formulation assumed.]
I’m saying it’s probably what I would, in fact, pick, if I were somehow in the epistemic state of being offered that choice. Yes, scale insensitivity and discounting play a role here, as does my confidence that I’m actually being offered an arbitrarily large number of annual minor annoyances (and the associated years of life).
Of course, it depends somewhat on the framing of the question. For example, if you tortured me for half an hour and said “OK, I can either keep doing that for the next 50 years, or I can stop doing that and annually annoy you mildly for the rest of your immortal life,” I would definitely choose the latter. (Really, I’d probably agree to anything that included stopping the torture and didn’t violate some sacred value of mine, and quite likely I’d agree to most things that did violate my sacred values. Pain is like that.)
Yosarian2 keeps framing the question in terms of “what would you choose?” rather than “what would leave you better off?”, and then responding to selections of torture (which make sense in EY’s framing) with incredulity that anyone would actually choose torture.
At some point, fighting over the framing of the problem isn’t worth my time: f they insist on asking a (relatively trivial) epistemic question about my choices, and insist on ignoring the (more interesting) question of what would leave me better off, at some point I just decide to answer the question they asked and be done with it.
This is similar to my response to many trolley questions: faced with that choice, what I would actually do is probably hesitate ineffectually, allowing the 5 people to die. But the more interesting question is what I believe I ought to do.
Well… ideally, what you choose is what would leave you better off, and is chosen with this in mind. What you do ought to be what you ought to do, and what you ought to do ought to be what you do. Anything out of line with this either damages you unnecessarily or acknowledges that the you that might have desired the ought-choice is dead.
Yes, ideally, I would choose what would leave me better off, and what I do ought to be what I ought to do, and what I ought to do ought to be what I do. Also, I ought to do what I ought to do, and various other formulations of this thought. And yes, not doing what I ought to do has negative consequences relative to doing what I ought to do, which is precisely what makes what I ought to do what I ought to do in the first place.
This, on the other hand, makes no sense to me at all.
Basically: if you’re not doing what you think you should be doing, you’re either screwing yourself or you’re not who you think you are.
Ah, I see. I think. I wouldn’t call that being dead, personally, but I can see why you do. I think.
I’m also the sort of person who believes he has been dead for billions of years. Basically—if someone exists at some point and does not at another, they have died. We change over time; we throw off a chain of subtly different dead selves.
Right, that’s what I figured you were using “dead” to mean.