Rationality Quotes August 2012

Alejandro1

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
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No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

OK, no prob!

(I do care about everything that exists. I am not particularly certain that all mathematically possible universes exist, or how much they exist if they do. I do expect that our own universe is spatially and in several other ways physically infinite or physically very big. I don't see this as a good argument against the fun of having children. I do see it as a good counterargument to creating children for the sole purpose of making sure that mindspace is fully explored, or because larger populations of the universe are good qua good. This has nothing to do with the reason I'm not having kids right now.)

"I do care about everything that exists. I am not particularly certain that all mathematically possible universes exist, or how much they exist if they do."

I was confused by this for a while, but couldn't express that in words until now.

First, I think existence is necessarily a binary sort of thing, not something that exists in degrees. If I exist 20%, I don't even know what that sentence should mean. Do I exist, but only sometimes? Do only parts of me exist at a time? Am I just very skinny? It doesn't really make sense. Just as a risk of a ri... (read more)

0A1987dM14y

So you're using exist in a sense according to which they have moral relevance iff they exist (or something roughly like that), which may be broader than ‘be in this universe’ but may be narrower than ‘be mathematically possible’. I think I get it now.

6[anonymous]14y

I think I care about almost nothing that exists, and that seems like too big a disagreement. It's fair to assume that I'm the one being irrational, so can you explain to me why one should care about everything?