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pedanterrific comments on The Apocalypse Bet - Less Wrong
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This is why the proposed system has the payments happen before the apocalypse. Did you actually read the post?
For most evolved creatures, it matters very little if their germ line is extingished in 10 years or 20 years - these outcomes are both germ-line extinction, they are both equally bad.
You have to use an accounting scheme which discounts extremely heavily for a few years for happiness to matter very much in the face of rapid eternal oblivion. Note that Yudkowsky advocates not discounting at all.
If they're equally bad, then congratulations - you've managed to make germ-line extinction not matter at all. Cause, see, that was going to happen eventually anyway, with the heat death if nothing else. If your reaction to learning that the universe is probably going to end wasn't suicidal despair, I have to think you don't actually believe what you're saying.
Extinction in 10 or 20 years would be regarded as being roughly equally bad - since these are small figures - smaller than the lifespan of humans and within their planning horizon. So an evolved creature acting in their genetic self-interest can be expected to regard both outcomes as being roughly equally bad.
In the case of 10 years and universal heat death, most evolved creatures would strongly prefer to avoid immediate extinction, since universal heat death is far outside both their experience and their planning horizon. As a bonus, there may be ways of avoiding the heat death - by creating large new low-entropy regions by using known inflationary processes.
Whoa, hold up - what does the lifespan and planning horizon of humans have to do with "most evolved creatures"? Plenty of things live less than ten years.
So: a mouse may not be able to conceive of "extinction of all its relatives in 20 years". That might conceivably hinder it in making an adaptive decision - it's brain is too small to understand the options.
People don't act in their genetic self-interest alone, and myself, I'd very much rather die childless in 20 years than die childless in 10 years.
I basically agree. I had said:
I think it is important to untangle belief and belief in belief here. timtyler is talking about his beliefs and so is sharing his beliefs about his beliefs, and I don't think he's likely lying.