In chapter 5, Alice and Bella don't come into direct skin-skin contact - they both have on long sleeves, and Alice hauls on Bella's arm, not her hand.
Typo fixed - thanks :) (Note that I'm fixing typos on Luminosity's own website only, not on FF.net due to interface hate. This one was a current typo, but if you're spotting them on FF.net instead of the Luminosity site, they may already have been caught.)
Your post is nightmare fuel and I did not like it. However, I strongly second the idea of safeguards in FAI. It just shouldn't torture people. An AI that is allowed to torture people will either be unFriendly or never exercise this power; between UFAIs that can and cannot torture me I prefer the latter. This leaves no plausible situation in which any AI ought to be made so that it can torture people, and I am confident enough in this that it's fine by me if by programming it that way, we close off some futures in which torture is implausibly used to bring about wonderful outcomes.
if you and your friends are going out to dinner, who decides where? If there is a disagreement about what restaurant, who decides? Which lone group members are able to sway the entire group towards their preferences, and which can't? When the bill comes, someone suggests dividing it equally even though some people ordered less expensive dishes. Can those group members assert that the bill should be divided differently?
When I am out with a single friend, or sometimes two, I tend to pick where we go unless I don't want to (due to not knowing what's available), break ties, successfully arrange to split appetizers I don't want to eat by myself, and either pay for my own often-cheaper food or not pay at all.
This is because under these circumstances, I typically have Schellingesque limits on myself. I'm a vegetarian with certain strong food preferences beyond that which limit where I can and will eat, and will tend to stay home rather than go somewhere I can't eat. I'm very frugal with my money, and will tend to stay home rather than enter a situation where I have to pay for dinner out (or any more than what I deliberately choose to pay for after looking at the prices). To get me to go to a restaurant involves picking one I expect to enjoy more than whatever I would cook for myself at home and buying me food there. I'm fairly difficult to take to dinner, actually, but people keep doing it anyway; I guess it's too much of a cultural staple to discard.
I don't think this is due to status, though, as I don't have nearly the same group-swaying power if I go out with several friends, even when individually each of them would do as I pleased restaurant-wise one-on-one. I can sometimes still get someone to pay my way, but if and only if I am clearly the guest of just one person. (I can get my date to pay for me even on a double date; when I was staying with a friend over a summer and the deal was that she bought my food she paid for restaurant meals too even if we ate with a larger bunch of people.) I don't always just stay home when a large group organizes a meal out because in that case I feel antisocial and whiny, and even when I do stay home, this lacks the ability to sway large groups (I think they think "she just didn't feel like coming" instead of "we have not adequately satisfied her preferences and should work harder at it because we are her friends who should be able to have dinner at a restaurant with her").
Edit: Sometimes a single person takes it upon him or herself to pay for everybody in a largeish group. I'm never this person, and have never in my memory been left out of such a collective payment. Paying for everybody seems to me like a high-status move.
tl;dr: I have complicated restaurant preferences and can get them met with individuals but not always groups.
But if you start conversations about the minutiae of efficient charity, and how you donate 40% of your income to Singinst/Givewell/VillageReachwhatever, and how you have put a financial value on a human life, then I am struggling to find a context in which this would make you either popular or attractive.
Mmmm. Rationalism.
It's not really too late then. Omega can predict what you'll do between seeing the boxes, and choosing which to take. If this is going to include a decision to take one box, then Omega will put a million dollars in that box.
I will not regret taking only one box. It strikes me as inconsistent to regret acting as the person I most wish to be, and it seems clear that the person I most wish to be will take only one box; there is no room for approved regret.
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Rape isn't nearly shocking enough. We need naughty words.