Mati_Roy(Mati Roy)
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/
Being immortal means you will one day be a Jupiter brain (if you think memories are part of one’s identity, which I think they are)
x-post: https://twitter.com/matiroy9/status/1451816147909808131
Here’s a way to measure (a proxy of) relative value of different years I just thought (again?); answer the question:
For which income I would you prefer to live in perpetual-2020 over living in perpetual-2021 with a median income? (maybe income is measured by fraction of the world owned multiplied by population size, or some other way) Then you can either chain those answers to go back to older years, or just compare them directly.
There are probably years where even Owning Everything wouldn’t be enough. I prefer to live in perpetual-2021 with a median income over, say, living in perpetual-1900 while Owning Everything. And probably also perpetual-1900 over some other year. Maybe this repeats 1-5 times total in human history. And even over owning everything an infinite amount of times.
So in that sense, we’ve already experienced a few singularities. Just meant as a fun thought!
Here’s another way to measure (a proxy of) relative value of different years which makes us look much advance (at least for my preferences).
For how many years would you be indifferent between living in perpetual-1900 over living 100 years in perpetual-2020? Here, my answer is much less; assuming finite lives have value in the first place, my answer would probably be less than 2x (so somewhere between 101 and 200 years old) (although I’ve never tried living in 1900).
Although from that perspective, I’ll never experience a singularity: I will never prefer a finite life over an infinite one, no matter how good the finite one and how bad the infinite one.
x-post: https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10159848043774579
Someone brought up to my attention that CI offers (or at least this was the case in 2010) 2 options:
Devoting similar attention to perfusing the head and the body.
Focusing most on the effort to the head and putting less effort to The body.
by the way, i think you could create or use a group on LessWrong to list all those events at the same place, and allow people to subscribe to them; ex.: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/3nnqSgGbF8x3mTcia
i shared here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/less.wrong.montreal
update: i also shared here: www.facebook.com/groups/AltruismeEfficaceMontreal/
ah shoot, i just saw this
I haven’t read yet, but seems relevant to the Facebook group Effective altruism: past people
Hobby: serve so many bullets to sophisticated philosophers that they’re missing half their teeth by the end of the discussion
I love this, thank you!
Longtermism vs short-termism for personal life extension
afaik, most board members are very passive, and hasnt been doing the things Nicolas wants to do
For the Cryonics Institute board elections, I recommend voting for Nicolas Lacombe.
I’ve been friends with Nicolas for over a decade. Ze’s very principled, well organized and hard working. I have high trust in zir, and high confidence ze would be a great addition to the CI’s board.
I recommend you cast some or all of your votes for Nicolas (you can cast up to 4 votes total). If you’re signed up with CI, simply email info@cryonics.org with your votes.
see zir description here: https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10159642542159579
my updated guide: https://coda.io/@mati-roy/lifelogging
before the birth of that AI, we could split the Universe among existing beings
crazy idea i just had mayyybe a deontological Libertarian* AI with (otherwise) any utility function is not that bad (?) maybe that should be one of the thing we try (??????) *where negative externality also count as aggressions, and other such fixes to naive libertarianism
I probably would mostly still use LessWrong for the wiki for my writings.
But as a reader, I would probably read at least the summary of each article, and probably the full text of each potentially actionable-for-me articles.
But I’d say finding the writers is harder than finding the readers
Another idea would be to have a “fringe” tag on LessWrong. But, actually, I think I would choose a more connotationally neutral term, like “speculative”. Although, still, that’s a changing and subjective category, so not sure I would do that.
Another idea would be to just curate fringe articles (like you’ve done in the description of this question). Maybe ask a question “What are articles on interesting fringe ideas?” on LessWrong.
You could also have a yearly prize of like 100$ to submit articles on fringe ideas. This might be a more cost-effective way to achieve your goal.
ah, I see! yeah, I guess being an associate member is stronger evidence (but am almost certain some people were preserved without this)
Sure! My point still stand though :)
Here it’s more about identity deterioration than value drift (you could maintain the same value while forgetting all your life).
But also, to address your claim in a vacuum:
Value-preservation is an instrumental convergent goal; ie. you’re generally more likely to achieve your goals if you want to achieve them.
Plus, I think most humans would value preserving their (fundamental) values intrinsically as well.
Am not sure I understand