Alex_Altair comments on Computation Hazards - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Alex_Altair 13 June 2012 09:49PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (57)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Alex_Altair 14 June 2012 03:48:21AM *  0 points [-]

In the situations above, the people will be created and, happy or not, eliminated as soon as they are no longer needed.

Also, I think it's not obvious whether we should create more happy people, or just improve the lives of the currently existing people. I kind of get the idea that post-singularity, we will all be combined into One Big Super Person, like reverse Ebborians, and it won't end up mattering.

Comment author: DanielLC 14 June 2012 06:06:55AM 0 points [-]

In the situations above, the people will be created and, happy or not, eliminated as soon as they are no longer needed.

I don't mean that they'll exist permanently. It's good for a happy person to exist, even if it's only for a little while.

Also, I think it's not obvious whether we should create more happy people, or just improve the lives of the currently existing people.

You shouldn't go out of your way to avoid running programs that create happy people. More generally, if it would be helpful to run such a program, but not quite worth the resources on its own, it may be worth while if it's a happy person. That will happen about as often as a program being worth while on its own, but not worth running because it creates a sad person.

Comment author: Alex_Altair 14 June 2012 06:20:13AM 1 point [-]

It's good for a happy person to exist, even if it's only for a little while.

I see that we have different utility functions.