You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Armok_GoB comments on Open thread, September 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

0 Post author: David_Gerard 02 September 2013 02:07PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (376)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 September 2013 08:54:28AM 6 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 15 September 2013 11:42:42PM 0 points [-]

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.