aarongertler comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

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Comment author: aarongertler 17 November 2014 05:26:01PM 10 points [-]

Teacher: So if you could live to be any age you like, what would it be?

Boy 2: Infinity.

Teacher: Infinity, you would live for ever? Why would you like to live for ever?

Boy 2: Because you just know a lot of people and make lots of new friends because you could travel to lots of countries and everything and meet loads of new animals and everything.

--Until (documentary)

http://mosaicscience.com/extra/until-transcript

Comment author: BloodyShrimp 18 November 2014 12:08:42AM 7 points [-]

While this is on My Side, I still have to protest trying to sneak any side (or particular (group of) utility function(s)) into the idea of "rationality".

Comment author: wedrifid 21 November 2014 01:00:54AM *  4 points [-]

While this is on My Side, I still have to protest trying to sneak any side (or particular (group of) utility function(s)) into the idea of "rationality".

To be fair, while it is possible to have a coherent preference for death far more often people have a cached heuristic to refrain from exactly the kind of (bloody obvious) reasoning that Boy 2 is explaining. Coherent preferences are a 'rationality' issue.

Since nothing in the quote prescribes the preference and instead merely illustrates reasoning that happens to follow from having preferences like those of Boy 2. If Boy 2 was saying (or implying) that Boy 1 should want to live to infinity then there would be a problem.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 05 December 2014 09:34:28PM 0 points [-]

From the same source:

Girl 1: Oh I would want to be a trillion years old.

Boy 2: That’s not even a number.

:|

hate to break it to you, kid...