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Epictetus comments on Can we decrease the risk of worse-than-death outcomes following brain preservation? - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: Synaptic 21 February 2015 10:58PM

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Comment author: Epictetus 23 February 2015 05:39:46PM 1 point [-]

To me one solution is that it seems possible to have an "out-clause": circumstances under which you'd prefer to have your preservation/suspension terminated.

This runs into a thorny ethical problem. It's like assisted suicide, except you're neither terminally ill, nor in a vegetative state, nor in extreme pain. Since you don't have anything more than a vague idea of the future, you're unable to provide the kind of informed consent necessary for this sort of thing. A friendly future is more likely to revive you and provide you with the appropriate psychiatric resources.

Comment author: Jiro 23 February 2015 06:30:06PM 0 points [-]

I think that is an unnecessarily limited idea of informed consent. Shouldn't knowing a probability distribution be enough for the consent to be informed?

Comment author: Lumifer 23 February 2015 06:52:32PM 2 points [-]

Shouldn't knowing a probability distribution be enough for the consent to be informed?

You don't know the probability distribution.