quote:Harry is making the wrong inference here, based on his assumptions. The correct conclusion would be "Every day you are living you want to live at least one more day". That is different from saying you want to live forever. Sort of like how you might want another potato chip after each time you eat a potato chip, but you simultaneously don't want to eat an infinite number of potato chips.
As Rabbit has noted, it is particularly interesting/frustrating that Eliezer has clearly thought a lot about this and still appears to have ended up too strongly attached to this particular belief. (He actually brings up the Potato chip analogy at some point, yet as far as I can tell manages to not apply it to Immortality).
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quote:What point is there to anything we do? To progressing through life? Working, reproducing, having fun, if it doesn't really matter, why do we do it?
Of course it matters. Why this demand that your actions should have some significance on the grand scale of the cosmos? What are we, little boys pissing our names in the snow? We are here now, we are alive for the next twenty years; what we do matters now. It's fine to keep your eyes on the skies; but if you don't look down once in a while to ensure your feet are still on the ground, you will stumble.
I also point out that we live at a cusp when humanity might either decline and go extinct, or else grow out into the universe and continue for the next hundred million years; at such a cusp your actions can matter greatly. Think of Pastwatch, and the difference of having a Columbus who didn't consider brown-skinned non-Christians to be half-trainable monkeys; well, here's your chance to have a similar impact!
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Of course it matters. Why this demand that your actions should have some significance on the grand scale of the cosmos? What are we, little boys pissing our names in the snow? We are here now, we are alive for the next twenty years; what we do matters now. It's fine to keep your eyes on the skies; but if you don't look down once in a while to ensure your feet are still on the ground, you will stumble.
I also point out that we live at a cusp when humanity might either decline and go extinct, or else grow out into the universe and continue for the next hundred million years; at such a cusp your actions can matter greatly. Think of Pastwatch, and the difference of having a Columbus who didn't consider brown-skinned non-Christians to be half-trainable monkeys; well, here's your chance to have a similar impact!
I agree with you, but WHY should anything I do, no matter how insignificant, matter now? If what I do now won't matter to me when I'm dead, why should it matter presently?
Who knows, I could go back to school and study and one day come up with a cure for cancer or solve the Navier-Stokes equations. It may matter to others during their lives, but if I'm dead, it won't matter to me, nor would I care.
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Because it matters to you, period. Things do not matter, in the abstract. Things matter to people who have a propensity for caring about things. Right now you care about things. Consequently, right now, you probably should do things you, personally, right now, care about. This can be finding a cure for cancer or it can be playing basketball with your son every afternoon. Or arguing on the internet with people about the meaning of life.
If life really has no meaning to you without eternal consequences, feel free to stop doing stuff and/or believe in eternal consequences, but I personally care a lot about who I am right now, regardless of how little I will care about it later. So I intend to continue to do things.
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There is no judge of what matters outside your own brain; your judgement stands alone. If you think something matters, it does; if not, not. And this would be the case, even if an all-powerful god should reveal that such-and-such an action is forbidden, or is sacred; for you would still have to make your own judgement on whether that god was worth listening to. Thus there cannot be any outside standard of mattering; and if, in your estimation, life in fact does not matter, I can only counsel that you follow the consequence of your judgement, and jump off a bridge, or ram an explosive-filled truck into the White House, or whatever means of suicide takes your fancy. But I submit that this is not, in fact, your real and honest judgement; for you have not done thus, but have acted as though life did indeed matter to you.
Touching the potato-chip analogy, I suggest if you genuinely do not want to live another day, that is easily enough arranged; and indeed, if you feel you want to live tomorrow but do not want to live beyond forty years, that's easily done too - just take up smoking. But in fact our desires are usually inconsistent here: We take up smoking, and then when forty years have gone by we find that, by damn, we do want to live another day. Eliezer is merely suggesting that we should take the consequence of our belief that the smoker is not acting in his best interests. Humans have a short time horizon; consequently our desires for forty years hence, and for one day after forty years have passed, are often in conflict. But we are usually more rational in judging one day ahead than in judging forty years (an activity for which our ancestors had little opportunity); therefore, we should listen to the one-day-ahead part of the brain, and act in accordance with what we think it will be saying in forty years.
Note that this is not an endorsement of short-term planning; it is exactly the opposite. It says that we should act, today, so that we will not curse our own short-sightedness in the future. And that means taking our best guess at what we'll want for one-day-ahead in forty years, and acting so that this desire is not thwarted; and our best (first-order) guess is that we'll want the same things in forty years as we do now.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: The perspective of a teenager =! to that of a 70 year old. Or a 100 year old.
Pretending that it is, and that life experience can be reduced to mere mathematics, is only one of the many issues I have with the lesswrong folks.
I vaguely remember an episode of Scrubs that presents this clash of ideas in a nutshell. I don't remember much else, but in it an elderly patient - who had lived a good life and experienced lots of great things - expressed her desire to live as long as possible rather than choosing a more "peaceful" drug-induced death, and J.D. just didn't get that.
I don't think this is a simple matter of lacking life experience.
Not quite right, I think. The episode you're referring to, I believe, had an elderly patient who was diagnosed with kidney failure of some sort and needed dialysis in order to go on living. She declined and said that she'd rather just die. Then a ton of bricks fell on J.D.s head.
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Yeah, I was remembering that episode differently too. Assuming we're talking about the same thing, JD's trying to give her reasons to keep on living ("seen the Eiffel Tower?" "Yep" "Seen the Meiffel tower?" "Oh now you're just making stuff up"). But she's already done everything she feels the need to do.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: There is no judge of what matters outside your own brain; your judgement stands alone. If you think something matters, it does; if not, not. And this would be the case, even if an all-powerful god should reveal that such-and-such an action is forbidden, or is sacred; for you would still have to make your own judgement on whether that god was worth listening to. Thus there cannot be any outside standard of mattering; and if, in your estimation, life in fact does not matter, I can only counsel that you follow the consequence of your judgement, and jump off a bridge, or ram an explosive-filled truck into the White House, or whatever means of suicide takes your fancy. But I submit that this is not, in fact, your real and honest judgement; for you have not done thus, but have acted as though life did indeed matter to you.
KOM, can you PM me your address? (I am kidding of course)
I do not feel as though nothing matters, I am trying to understand the view a little better. You as well as others know that I believe in an afterlife, and this gives me a reason to question what I do and to do what I think matters. I don't want to turn this into a religious discussion by any means, just trying to gain perspective. I am trying to gain an understanding of what the rational thinker believes about life, death, and what matters, and I think you and Raymond have explained it well.
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Think about having a pet you care about. Most people don't believe pets have an afterlife, or religious concerns, but pet owners still want their pets to have a good life. You care for them, enjoy their company, get them medical care when they're sick, buy them food and toys, all the while believing that they have a limited, purely physical life.
If you're a materialist, you enjoy life for its own sake. You have meaning in the experiences you have, the things you learn, he people you spend time with.
Or to look at it another way, most religious people don't consider every action to be vital to their salvation. It doesn't matter if you watch TV or play a video game. It doesn't matter if you eat an apple or a pear. You still enjoy one activity more than the other, and it makes a difference to you which you do, even without any "ultimate" consequences.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Think about having a pet you care about. Most people don't believe pets have an afterlife, or religious concerns, but pet owners still want their pets to have a good life. You care for them, enjoy their company, get them medical care when they're sick, buy them food and toys, all the while believing that they have a limited, purely physical life.
If you're a materialist, you enjoy life for its own sake. You have meaning in the experiences you have, the things you learn, he people you spend time with.
Or to look at it another way, most religious people don't consider every action to be vital to their salvation. It doesn't matter if you watch TV or play a video game. It doesn't matter if you eat an apple or a pear. You still enjoy one activity more than the other, and it makes a difference to you which you do, even without any "ultimate" consequences.
Thank you MC. This helps me understand it a bit more. I appreciate it!
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: You as well as others know that I believe in an afterlife, and this gives me a reason to question what I do and to do what I think matters.
Well, no. What does it matter how you spend your afterlife? Why does it matter that you act in accordance with the will of a god? These are matters of judgement, not written in the fabric of the universe. Even if you believe in a Hell of literal fire, the wish to avoid it is nothing but a preference, no more or less valid than a desire to have children.
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I understand what you are getting at. If I lived forever, the things I do would matter to me and to others....Forever. That's really the only explanation I can give.
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So... last night I dreamed about explaining preference utilitarianism to somebody for an hour. Then explained paperclip maximizers (not sure if I had a valid reason in the dream for explaining paperclip maximizers, but they're really fun to talk about).
Methinks me needs to take a break from less wrong.
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