= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
MrHen comments on Rationality, Cryonics and Pascal's Wager - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (54)
Well... this post could easily infringe on things not to be discussed until May...
...but I'm promoting it because of the fascinating idea that playing RPGs with dice-rolling gives you a real-world feel for small probabilities that are still large enough to be encountered once in your career. Presumably Roko feels that anything less than one in a thousand isn't worthwhile because he's never been asked to roll 4 sixes and done so successfully.
That being said, if someone sat me down and offered me the life of my dreams if I rolled 4 sixes but would shoot me if I failed, I would pass. Expected payout be darned, I want to live.
I think my thinking about cryonics does boil down to this: living now is of significantly more value (to me) than potentially living more or better later.
A more concrete example, if a being showed up and told me I had 10 years left to live but had the option of "dying" now, being reanimated 10 years later, and then living for 11 years instead, I would probably still pass. I have no idea when the extra time would tip the scales, but even with 100% confidence it is more than "any".
I've used that as a numerical answer to the question "How are you doing today?"
A: Perfect life (health and wealth) B: Instant painless death C: Current life.
What probability p of A (and 1-p of B) makes you indifferent between that deal (p of A, 1-p of B) and C? That probability p, represents an answer to the question "How are you doing?"
Almost nothing that happens to me changes that probability by much, so I've learned not to sweat most ups and downs in life. Things that change that probability (disabling injury or other tragedy) are what to worry about.