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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Open Thread: September 2009 - Less Wrong
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On the consolidation of dust specks and the preservation of utilitarian conclusions:
Suppose that you were going to live for at least 3^^^3 seconds. (If you claim that you cannot usefully imagine a lifespan of 3^^^3 seconds or greater, I must insist that you concede that you also cannot usefully imagine a group of 3^^^3 persons. After all, persons are a good deal more complicated than seconds, and you have experienced more seconds than people.)
Suppose that while you are contemplating how to spend your 3^^^3-plus seconds, you are presented with a binary choice: you may spend the next 50 years of this period of time being tortured, or you may spend the next 3^^^3 seconds with a speck of dust in your eye that you cannot get rid of until that time period is up. (Should you succeed in uploading or similar over the course of the next 3^^^3 seconds, the sensation of the speck in the eye will accompany you in the absence of a physical eye until you have waited it out). Assume that after the conclusion of the torture (should you select it), you will be in fine physical health to go on with the rest of your lengthy life, although no guarantees are made for your sanity. Assume that the speck of dust does not impede your vision, and that you will not claw out your eye trying to be rid of it at any time; likewise, no guarantees are made for your sanity.
What selection would you make?
What if the TORTURE occurs during a random time in the next 3^^^3 seconds, not right at the beginning? Also, I think we definitely require a limit on sanity damage because otherwise the scenario is being tortured for 50 years and then spending the next 3^^^3 seconds being insane which Vastly outweighs the ordinary scenario of being tortured for 50 years.
In the original scenario, where just some random person got tortured, no constraints were specified about eir sanity or lifespan post-torture.
I think I did specify that no one would die who would otherwise be immortal; eternal insanity or 3^^^3 years of insanity ought to be implicitly included, I'd think.