MaoShan comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 October 2012 02:11AM

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

Comments (305)

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

Comment author: MixedNuts 13 October 2012 04:03:34AM 7 points [-]

Suppose that your daughter is leaving tomorrow and scheduled to cross your horizon next week. (It's a fast ship.) I offer you a hundred dollars if you inject her with a poison that will remain inactive for a month, then kill her instantly and painlessly.

If your daughter was going to stay around, you would refuse: you prefer your daughter's life to a hundred dollars. If Omega had promised to kill your daughter next week, you would accept: it will never affect your daughter, and you like having a hundred dollars.

What do you do, and why?

Comment author: MaoShan 13 October 2012 04:42:18AM *  3 points [-]

You would refuse either way if you enjoy the fact that your daughter is alive, because she would not cease to exist to her own senses, only yours. Only if your sole reason for preferring her to be alive is to interact with you personally, then you would accept the offer, also assuming that you do not fear social repercussions for your decision. I had an interesting conversation with my own daughter when she was 9 about being put into a virtual reality machine and whether it mattered if her friends outside the machine died as long as they were real and alive to her senses in the machine. She said she would be fine with that only if the machine could rewrite her pre-machine memories to erase any guilt.