Jiro comments on A quick calculation on exercise - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Elo 23 October 2014 02:50AM

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

Comments (38)

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

Comment author: Jiro 27 October 2014 04:13:31PM -1 points [-]

No, actually, it is. It shouldn't matter whether the time is removed by

  1. Dying by X length of time sooner.
  2. Having an extra period of unconsciousness of length X stuck in the middle of the person's life, and not dying any sooner.

Just because the person wakes up in case 2 and doesn't wake up in case 1 doesn't mean that the two aren't equivalent; both involve the same duration of wakefulness, even if not the same number of wake-up moments.

Comment author: VAuroch 29 October 2014 12:23:57AM -1 points [-]

If you knew precisely when you would die, and precisely how long you would be unconscious, and the date of your death was immutable except by these two options and your quality of life while aging was totally immutable, then maybe they'd be equivalent. But living your life further in the future increases the expected length of your life and quality of life, as well as getting you massive novelty benefits from living further into the future and seeing what is there.

Death is the cessation of 'you'. All things after you die, are inaccessible to you, regardless of how much you value them. This is why death is the Minimum Fun Location. It is not sleep; sleep is not horrible, just a mildly unpleasant need. You are claiming that having to sleep twice as much across a 100-year lifespan is the same thing as dying at 50, and that's an utterly ridiculous claim.