= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
James_Miller comments on Ethics and rationality of suicide - 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 (190)
Consider two people identical in every respect except that starting tomorrow the first person will always be watched and will never be capable of committing suicide whereas the second will always be capable of committing suicide. Do you contend that their rational calculation for whether they should commit suicide today is the same?
Or, are you saying that a person should kill himself if and only if doing so would increase his expected utility? I don't think, however, this was implied by khafra's post
That's exactly what I'm saying, and as far as I can tell, exactly what khafra was saying as well.
Whether you will be able to kill yourself in the future doesn't affect the expected utility of that future, except insofar as things which would prevent you from killing yourself would affect its utility.
Expected utility is basically defined as that which a rational person maximizes.