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MileyCyrus comments on "Ray Kurzweil and Uploading: Just Say No!", Nick Agar - Less Wrong
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I, and I suspect the entire human species, is risk averse. Suppose I have to choose between to bets:
A: 50% chance of living 100 happy years. 50% chance of living 100 torture years.
B: 50% chance of living 1,000,0000 happy years, 50% chance of living 1,000,000 torture years.
I will pick the first because it has the better bad option. While additional happy years have diminishing additional utility, additional torture have increasing dis-utility. I would rather a 50% chance of being tortured for 10 years than a 10% chance of being tortured for 50 years.
When WBE is invented, the stakes will be upped. The good possibilities get much better, and the bad possibilities get much worse. As a risk averse person, this scares me.
Would you prefer
C: 50% chance of living 1 happy minute. 50% chance of living 1 torture minute.
over both? If not, why not?
At those ratios, absolutely. I'm not sure how to explain why, since it just seems obvious that suicide would be preferable to a 50% chance of being tortured for a century. (I'm not sure at what what ratio it would become a real dilemma.)