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Prismattic comments on What are your benchmarks of rationality? - Less Wrong Discussion

0 Post author: DataPacRat 29 January 2012 03:57AM

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Comment author: Prismattic 29 January 2012 05:18:19AM 12 points [-]

Beware inferential distance. "Everyone should be immortal" includes a lot of unstated assumptions that the person you say it to may not be aware of. They could easily think you mean "Everyone should basically be as they are now, except live forever", which would mean either malthusian misery or draconian restrictions on reproduction. Unless you have already discussed tranhumanism with them, this is a terrible benchmark.

Comment author: APMason 29 January 2012 05:24:57AM 2 points [-]

That's not the way I usually phrase it - I don't know how that would fit into a conversation anyway. I was just summarising the subject matter. Sorry for the confusion.