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Ghatanathoah comments on Is a paperclipper better than nothing? - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: DataPacRat 24 May 2013 07:34PM

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Comment author: Ghatanathoah 28 May 2013 02:30:31AM 5 points [-]

I'm tempted to choose B just because if I choose A someone will try to use the Axiom of Transitivity to "prove" that I value some very large amount of paperclippers more than some small amount of humans. And I don't.

I might also choose B because the paperclipper might destroy various beautiful nonliving parts of the universe. I'm not sure if I really value beautiful rock formations and such, even if there is no one to view them. I tend to agree that something requires both an objective and subjective component to be truly valuable.

On the other hand, maybe the value for beautiful things I will never see is some sort of "between the margins" value, something that I value, but that my values regarding eudaemonic life are lexically prior to. All other things being equal, I'd prefer a universe with even a tiny amount of eudaemonic life (that isn't suffering or anything like that) to a totally lifeless universe chock-full of unobserved beautiful stuff. But maybe a lifeless pretty universe is more valuable to me than a lifeless ugly universe, all other things being equal.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 May 2013 03:03:20PM 1 point [-]

I expected the link to go here. :-)