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sketerpot comments on The $125,000 Summer Singularity Challenge - Less Wrong
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Is it beneficial to say "immortality"? Would "It's my contract of resurrection with the Cult of the Severed Head" be deficient?
Phrases like "live forever" and "immortal" bring corrupting emotional connotations with them. It's not automatic to ignore the literal meaning of terms, even if we consciously keep track of what we mean - and of course in a discussion, we can only do our best to help the other person not be confused, not think for them.
The key thing is for your voice to make it clear that you're not at all afraid and that you think this is what the high-prestige smart people do. Show the tiniest trace of defensiveness and they'll pounce.
So, your method leaves open the option of educating your interlocutor, if they question further. If all you're worried about is avoiding a status hit, you could confidently proclaim it to be an amulet given to you by the king of all geese in honor of your mutual defense treaty.
I wasn't referring to prestige at all when I said "beneficial". I was exclusively referring to what sketerpot is referring to.
I don't see how "resurrection" is less of a show of confidence, confidence by nonchalance in framing an issue in light least favorable to the speaker. The advantage is that people do not get confused and think it a bad idea for reasons that don't actually apply.
In arguments, it's pretty common for people to argue for the traditional "decay and die before living even a hundred years" system with arguments against literal immortality. I've seen this happen so many times.
"What if you're getting your liver continuously ripped out by disagreeable badgers?" the argument goes. "Immortality would be potentially super-painful! And that's why the life expectancies in the society in which I happened to be born are about right."
The easiest way to bypass this semantic confusion is to explicitly say that it's about always having the option of continuing to be alive, rather than what people usually mean by immortality.
(P.S: Calling the necklace a phylactery would also be fun.)
1) Death can still happen from any number of causes - tornadoes, for example.
2) That may bypass some of the most conscious semantic confusion, in the same way declaring that whenever you said any number, you always meant that number minus seven would clear up some confusion (if you did that). There is a better way.
3) It's probably not true.