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buybuydandavis comments on Constructing fictional eugenics (LW edition) - Less Wrong Discussion

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 October 2012 12:41AM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 30 October 2012 10:16:43PM 2 points [-]

It's not just pride and self concept. Your relative status in society would take a huge hit.

Everyone smarter than you by two standard deviations? You're the stupidest human in the world, by two standard deviations? Let's just confine ourselves to conscious humans without brain damage. I can't think you even mean that.

Let's go even higher and just take 2 sd as the lower bound, from which you are 2 sd lower. You're fine with being in the bottom 0.003%?

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 01 November 2012 09:02:19PM 0 points [-]

If everyone else is that smart, then we will probably soon no longer be in a scarcity economy, and we'd probably be functionally immortal to boot. At that point, I'd take it, period. Even if I was just effectively some ordinary person's pet, I'd still be waaay ahead of where I am now.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 01 November 2012 11:34:26PM 2 points [-]

Being an immortal pet might get rather depressing. I don't think that's how you dreamed your future life, and regardless of dreams, I don't think a lot of your basic drives will be satisfied as a pet.

But better to be alive as a pet, than dead. If that's really the trade off, then I might take it too. But that's practically what it would take for me - a choice between being alive as a pet, or dead/

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 04 November 2012 02:35:58AM *  2 points [-]

Exactly. I like life enough to suffer degradation in one aspect to reap super-massive benefit on the 'being alive' front. Plus, if I can hang in there, then they may be able to enhance my cognition up to parity eventually. I don't see this situation as being permanent.