Hello,

Not sure if any SLCers have seen this thread:

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/e9t/the_wandering_rationalist/

...but I'll be travelling through SLC sometime in December and it would be great to meet some of you if you're planning another meetup around that time. Offers of hanging out and accommodation gratefully received!

This runs into the "experiencing self" vs "remembering self" distinction. Conceptually it seems very troublesome to perform expected utility calculations on behalf of the experiencing self - the one who would suffer the pains in the above scenario.

From the perspective of the remembering self, pain only matters if it leaves a trace: if you can remember it, or if (unconsciously) it changes the choices you'd make in similar situations in future.

(Think of Sammy Jenkis in the movie Memento who was shown to not be a "true" amnesiac - he avoided picking up toys that had been previously rigged to give him electric shock, even though he behaved as though he had no memory of the past shocks. Yes, this is a fictional example - but despite being fictional it validly highlights a distinction lurking below the surface of the word "memory".)

From this perspective the disutility of the "hell" scenario consists only of the opportunity cost, i.e. while suffering hell you could instead have been doing something pleasant that you'd have remembered afterwards. But deleting the memories, and deleting any dispositions you may have acquired as a result of experiencing the pain, and so on - essentially restoring you to a previous backup - the deleted pain will not count from the perspective of the remembering self.

(Noting the "backup" analogy in the previous paragraph, I have to acknowledge that my intuitions in this may be shaped in part by my experiences playing video games...)

My favorite way to cross the US, especially if you're not in a hurry, is by Amtrak train, though I don't have too much experience with buses (Amtrak or otherwise; I've taken one Amtrak bus and no Greyhound buses). Train tickets tend to be cost-competitive with bus tickets, except that the routes are way more limited. (Their train route map is here, and so you can see that going from Minneapolis to Oklahoma City requires going east then south then west then north, rather than just south, but you may end up having to do similar things on buses.)

If you're old enough, renting a car might be a good option, especially if you want to do a lot of touristy stuff.

Let me know if you stop while passing through Laramie, Wyoming. You'll already be pretty close to Denver, but if you need a place to stay the night, I should be able to put you up (depending on the dates).

When you head down from Portland toward San Francisco, I recommend taking the 101 or the 1 rather than the 5--the trip along the 101 (at least the southern half of the trip) is very pretty, and the weather is usually very mild, whereas inland it's usually pretty hot, or I guess in the winter it would be pretty cold.

It's about 75 more km but the coast is much nicer, and if you have some time to stop around Arcata, there are some beautiful national parks if you like forests, and I can recommend some local restaurants and possibly meet up, since I'll be up there in late December on Christmas break.

(I grew up in that area and my parents and a number of old friends are there, but I don't live there so I don't know that I could offer you a place to stay.)

I can help you when you are in the Portland area. Just let me know what you need.

I can't imagine you wanting to pass through Iowa City, IA for any reason, but if your route takes you along that way, feel free to let me know. I'd be happy to let you spend the night, although it'd be limited to a sleeping bag on a quasi-soft carpet.

http://ridejoy.com/ is a ride-sharing startup that you might want to check out.

If you wanted to swing down through Austin, Texas in between Oklahoma and Amarillo, I should have a couch that you can sleep on. Austin's a fun city, with a LW meetup group to boot.

Also, for much of the interior of the US you don't need to worry all that much about sticking to the big highways. If I were driving from Amarillo to Denver, I'd take 87 to 25, not 40 to 25 (which adds 4 hours to Google Map's estimated duration). If you want to visit Albuquerque, then 40 to 25 is the right call, but if you're stopping there so you can take 40 I wouldn't bother.

We're not on your route, but as a general suggestion, you might have more success checking out meetups on your route and contacting individual people from those meetups. (Not everyone tracks the site closely.)