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Mitchell_Porter comments on Hedging our Bets: The Case for Pursuing Whole Brain Emulation to Safeguard Humanity's Future - Less Wrong
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By 'death' I assume you mean the usual process of organ failure, tissue necrosis, having what's left of me dressed up and put in a fancy box, followed by chemical preservation, decomposition, and/or cremation? Considering the long-term recovery prospects, no, I don't think I can imagine a form of torture worse than that, except perhaps dragging it out over a longer period of time or otherwise embellishing on it somehow.
This may be a simple matter of differing personal preferences. Could you please specify some form of torture, real or imagined, which you would consider worse than death?
Suppose I was tortured until I wanted to die. Would that count?
There have been people who wanted to die for one reason or another, or claimed to at the time with apparent sincerity, and yet went on to achieve useful or at least interesting things. The same cannot be said of those who actually did die.
Actual death constitutes a more lasting type of harm than anything I've heard described as torture.
There's a nihilism lurking here which seems at odds with your unconditional affirmation of life as better than death. You doubt that anything anyone has ever done was "useful"? How do you define useful?
Admittedly, my personal definition isn't particularly rigorous. An invention or achievement is useful if it makes other people more able to accomplish their existing goals, or maybe if it gives them something to do when they'd otherwise be bored. It's interesting (but not necessarily useful) if it makes people happy, is regarded as having artistic value, etc.
Relevant examples: Emperor Norton's peaceful dispersal of a race riot was useful. His proposal to construct a suspension bridge across San Francisco Bay would have been useful, had it been carried out. Sylvia Plath's work is less obviously useful, but definitely interesting.