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Oscar_Cunningham comments on Open thread, September 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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How does that negative utility vary over time though? Because if it stays the same (or increases) then if we know now it's impossible to live 3^^^3 years, then disutility from death sooner than that is counterbalanced (or more than that) by averted disutility from dying later, meaning decisions made are basically the same as if you didn't disvalue death (or as if you valued it).
I think that part of the badness of death is the destruction of that person's accumulated experience. Thus the negative utility of death does indeed increase over time. However this is counterbalanced by the positive utility of their continued existence. If someone lives to 70 rather than 50 then we're happy because the 20 extra years of life were worth more than the worsening of the death event.
In this case, it seems like the best policy is cryopreserving then letting them stay dead but extracting those experiences and inserting them in new minds.
Which sounds weird when you say it like that, but is functionally equivalent to many of the scenarios you would intuitively expect and find good, like radically improving minds and linking them into bigger ones before waking them up since anything else would leave them unable to meaningfully interact with anything anyway and human-level minds are unlikely to qualify for informed consent.
So if Bob is cryopreserved, and I can res him for N dollars, or create a simulation of a new person and run them quickly enough to catch up a number of years equal to Bob's age at death, for N - 1 dollars, I should spend all available dollars on the latter?
Edit: to clarify why I think this is implied by your answer, what this is doing is trading such that you gain a death at Bob's current age, but gain a life of experience up to Bob's current age. If a life ending at Bob's current age is net utility positive, this has to be net utility positive too.
broadly: yes, though all available dollars is actually all available dollars (for making people), and you're ignoring considerations like keeping promises to people unable to enforce them such as the cryopreserved or asleep or unconscious etc.