TheOtherDave comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 19 April 2012 05:37:43PM *  -1 points [-]

That's not that easy, unless having a dust speck in my eye also entails my living for 3^^^3 years.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 April 2012 05:46:14PM 1 point [-]

Wait, what?

To clarify:
A = Dust speck in your eye, and your life is otherwise as it would have been without this deal.
B = 3^^^3 years of torture, followed by death.

Is that an easy choice for you?
If not, can you summarize your arguments in favor of choosing B?

Comment author: [deleted] 19 April 2012 05:52:10PM *  6 points [-]

If not, can you summarize your arguments in favor of choosing B?

Well, if I choose B, I'll be alive for a very large number of years. I'll be alive so long, that I expect that I'll get used to anything deployed to torture me. And I'll be alive so long, I'd need to study a fair amount of cosmology just to understand what my lifetime will involve, by way of the deaths and rebirths of whole universes or whatever. Some of that would be interesting to see.

The easy thought experiment would be dust speck vs. 3 years of torture followed by death. I think there, I'd go with the speck.

Comment author: Vaniver 19 April 2012 06:50:10PM *  13 points [-]

I'll be alive so long, that I expect that I'll get used to anything deployed to torture me.

Is this based on the experience of torture victims? I think that "get used to" would more closely resemble "catatonic" than "unperturbed." I don't think your ability to be interested would survive very long.

Comment author: siodine 20 April 2012 01:39:10AM 3 points [-]

I wonder if there's a case study of an individual that's been exposed to prolong torture. Probably have to look through Nazi and Japanese experiments.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 April 2012 01:31:13AM 6 points [-]

(takes deep breath)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE

sorry, I just had to scream for a bit

Comment author: shminux 20 April 2012 03:47:19AM 2 points [-]

Them dust specks hurtin'?

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 02:51:18AM 0 points [-]

I...um. Are you agreeing with me? Or did I say something stupid?

Comment author: siodine 20 April 2012 03:03:05AM 6 points [-]

I think you can be confident that he's not agreeing with you.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 05:22:35AM 4 points [-]

I ask only that people disagree with me in such a way that my errors are corrected.

Comment author: siodine 20 April 2012 01:22:27PM 9 points [-]
  • If you've acclimated to torture it's no longer torture.
  • If you've acclimated to torture the effects have likely left you with a life not worth living.
  • Torture isn't something you can acclimate yourself to in hypotheticals. E.g., the interlocutor could say "oh you would acclimate to water boarding, well then I'll scoop your brain out, intercept your sensory modalities, and feed you horror. but wait, just when you're getting used to it I wipe your memory."
  • All this misses the point of the hypothetical by being too focused on the details rather than the message. Have you told someone the trolley experiment and had them say something like "but I would call the police, or I'm not strong enough to push a fat man over" and have to reform the experiment over and over until they got the message?
Comment author: RobinZ 20 April 2012 02:50:48PM *  0 points [-]

Until you posted this comment, I thought your response was intended as humor.

Edit: And not of the ha ha only serious type.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 April 2012 06:07:42PM 0 points [-]

OK, thanks for clarifying.

Comment author: thomblake 19 April 2012 05:51:27PM *  0 points [-]

An obvious argument in favor of B is that you get to live for 3^^^3 years. A reframing:

A = Dust speck in your eye, after which you read a normal life except that you cease to exist a mere 60 years later.
B = Tortured for the rest of your life, but you never die.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 12:23:02AM *  1 point [-]

B is just the traditional idea of hell, isn't it? (IIRC, the present-day Catholic Church's idea is that hell is just the inability to see God.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 April 2012 06:11:38PM *  0 points [-]

(nods) That seemed the obvious argument, as you say, though it depends on the notion that being tortured for a year is a net utility gain (relative to not existing for that year at all), which seemed implausible to me. But it turns out that is indeed what ABrooks meant.

(shrug) No accounting for taste.

Edit: He later asserted that had been a joke.

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