aarongertler comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong
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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
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.
From the same source:
:|
hate to break it to you, kid...