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woodside comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong
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I'm curious about your personal experiences with physical pain. What is the most painful thing you've experienced and what was the duration?
I'm sympathetic to your preference in the abstract, I just think you might be surprised at how little pain you're actually willing to endure once it's happening (not a slight against you, I think people in general overestimate what degree of physical pain they can handle as a function of the stakes involved, based largely on anecdotal and second hand experience from my time in the military).
At the risk of being overly morbid, I have high confidence (>95%) that I could have you begging for death inside of an hour if that were my goal (don't worry, it's certainly not). An unfriendly AI capable of keeping you alive for eternity just to torture you would be capable of making you experience worse pain than anyone ever has in the history of our species so far. I believe you that you might sign a piece of paper to pre-commit to an eternity of torture vice simple death. I just think you'd be very very upset about that decision. Probably less than 5 minutes into it.
I agree with everything you said, but I think it's worth noting:
IIRC, there's an Australian jellyfish with venom so painful that one of the symptoms is begging for death After it wears off, though, preferences regarding death revert to normal. I would argue torture is equivalent to wireheading with regards to preferences, only inverted. So "tortured!me would accept death if offered" need not contradict "current!me should not accept death over torture".
The jellyfish I had in mind is Carukia barnesi, which causes irukandji syndrome. Wikipedia seems to imply the "begging for death" aspect may actually be a separate biochemical phenomenon, but the source provided doesn't actually claim this - just that sufferers feel "anxious" and a "sense of impending doom".
I would definitely pre-commit to immortality.
As soon as you stop torturing him though - and it's clear that the torture will not resume - I have high confidence (>95%) that he would go back to wanting to live.
The relevant question, I think, is not whether an individual would cease wanting to die after the torture had ended. If then offered a choice between death and more torture (for a very long time, and with no afterward to look forward to), would dclayh (or some other person in the same situation) change their mind?