Perplexed comments on Cryonics Questions - Less Wrong

9 Post author: James_Miller 26 August 2010 11:19PM

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Comment author: Perplexed 29 August 2010 04:52:31PM 1 point [-]

It wouldn't form a utility function at all. It has no answer for any of the interesting or important questions: the questions on which there is disagreement. Or am I missing something here?

Comment author: timtyler 29 August 2010 05:31:07PM *  0 points [-]

In the human genome project analogy, they wound up with one person's DNA.

Humans have various eye colours - and the sequence they wound up with seems likely to have some eye colour or another.

Comment author: Perplexed 29 August 2010 05:41:54PM 2 points [-]

Ok, you are changing the analogy. Initially you said, throw away the differences. Now you are saying throw away all but one of them.

So our revised approximation of the CEV is the expressed volition of ... Craig Venter?!

Would that horrify the vast majority of humanity? I think it might. Mostly because people just would not know how it would play out. People generally prefer the devil they know to the one they don't.

Comment author: timtyler 29 August 2010 06:37:49PM *  0 points [-]

FWIW, it wasn't really Craig Venter, but a combination of multiple people - see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project#Genome_donors

Comment author: Pavitra 29 August 2010 05:07:34PM 0 points [-]

No, I agree. I just don't understand where you were going when you emphasized that

you are still left with something.

Comment author: Perplexed 29 August 2010 05:27:47PM 1 point [-]

No, I agree. I just don't understand where you were going when you emphasized that

you are still left with something.

The guy who wrote and emphasized that was timtyler - It wasn't me

Comment author: Pavitra 29 August 2010 05:42:07PM 0 points [-]

The anti-kibitzer is more confusing than I realized.

Comment author: timtyler 29 August 2010 05:26:37PM *  0 points [-]

Well, it was I who wrote that. The differences were thrown away in the genome project - but that isn't exactly the corresponding thing according to the CEV proposal.

A certain lack of coherence doesn't mean all the conflicting desires cancel out leaving nothing behind - thus the emphasis on still being "left with something".