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CellBioGuy comments on Open Thread, Jun. 1 - Jun. 7, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 01 June 2015 12:45AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 01 June 2015 07:19:53AM 2 points [-]

That's only following if you follow some intuitive utilitarian ideas to their unintuititve conclusions. I'm curious as to how you arrived at this view as "the truth," and not just "an obvious failure mode of utilitarianism."?

Comment author: DanielLC 01 June 2015 06:59:10PM 0 points [-]

I think it has something to do with intuiting eternalism. If you think that when you're dead you're just gone and nothing matters, then death makes life meaningless. If you think that when you die you still exist in the past, then the only advantage of not dying is that it makes the time you exist longer.

Also, I reject personal identity. Someone who remembers being me isn't fundamentally different from someone who does not. I don't know if that's at quite an intuitive enough level to explain this though.