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Does he? Methinks you underestimate the long-term value of easy access to information.
Indeed! I can say from some experience that being dead and having an internet connection is far preferable to the alternative.
In response to
Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013
Vague thought: it is very bad when important scientists die (in the general sense, including mathematicians and cmputer scientists). I recently learned that von Neumann died at age 54 of cancer. I think it's no exaggeration to say that von Neumann was one of the most influential scientists in history and that keeping him alive even 10 years more would have been of incredible benefit to humankind.
Seems like a problem worth solving. Proposed solution: create an organization which periodically offers grants to the most influential / important scientists (or maybe just the most influential / important people period), only instead of money they get a team of personal assistants who take care of their health and various unimportant things in their lives (e.g. paperwork). This team would work to maximize the health and happiness of the scientist so that they can live longer and do more science. Thoughts?
Oh, but some of them are such excellent company! Feynmann was such a charming raconteur when he came to visit in 1989...
As a woman, I would rather avoid people like you anyway. Hope that helps.
Why is this? Is it because he admitted to being socially low status?
Or perhaps because he is as bitter as quinine?
When I eat the cucumber it becomes part of me, a moment of my life times the part of me that is that cucumber is worth more than the life of a cucumber alone, and through cryonics I intend to live forever.
Yuyuko is a monster if and only if he has not signed up for cryonics.
Being now quite thoroughly postmortem, it would seem an act of futile vanity to attempt it. Oh, but it does sound deliciously novel! Perhaps you would be willing to let me partake of your form instead, and preserve the least choice of parts in such a manner? I daresay it would take a full day of roasting and require a great deal of salt. You shall have the consolation of becoming a part of me, a moment of my...well, at any rate existence, times the part of me that is your mortal coil is worth more than your life alone (to borrow your eccentric phrasing!) Through basic inertia I expect to exist forever, so your finite loss is more than exceeded by infinite gain.
I do hope you consider my proposal, and solicit your opinion as to whether you would go better with rice or sweet potato.
If a moment of the cucumber's life is worth anything at all (epsilon > 0), and that worth doesn't converge towards 0 arbitrarily close (series has no limit), then the life of that single immortal cucumber is worth more than the existence of all currently living humans. You monster.
Not even taking into account the terrible torture of skinning the cucumber alive, making the salad.
You have me at a disadvantage! Enlightenment dawns. It would clearly be an act of greatest impropriety not to donate all of my proceds to a charity which evaluates charities which themselves purchase a maximal number of cucumbers for the lowest possible price per. Being quite dead myself, and thus bearing no particular cost of living, I estimate the full sum of my household income could be devoted to the task without breaking the bank, as it were. But, hold -- would it be better to direct my humble servant to the task of increasing the household income directly? Or simply turn her into fertilizer in which future generations of cucumbers might be grown? I estimate her mass at perhaps 43 kilograms. Being profoundly ignorant in matters of horticulture, I attempted to discreetly inquire whether that might not be enough fertilizer to sustain the growth of a plot yielding 3^^^3 cucumbers in all -- a quantity so great that their aggregate benefit would clearly justify parting her from the use of her flesh. She has become suspicious of my motives, I fear, and won't answer. I find this behavior profoundly selfish on her part!
Oh, but must we give up winter melon as well?
yet these guys' experience with cryopreservaiton probably hasn't extended beyond putting groceries in the kitchen freezer
Hey, those cucumbers are gonna live forever.
Immortal cucumbers make the best salads.
it would take a lot for the AI to convince me that it has successfully created copies of me which it will torture, much more than just a propensity for telling the truth. Is the fact that it is fully capable (based on, say, readings of it's processing capabilities, it's ability to know the state of your current mind, etc), and the fact that it has no reason NOT to do what it says (no skin of it's back to torture the subjective "you"s, even if you DON'T let it out, it will do so just on principal).
While it's understandable to say that, today, you aren't in some kind of Matrix, because there is no reason for you to believe so, in the situation of the guard, you DO know that it can do so, and will, even if you call it's "bluff" that the you right now is the original.
I had intended to reply with this very objection. It seems you've read my mind, Satori.
In response to
[Link] How Should Rationalists Approach Death? (Skepticon 4)
With drinks, if possible.
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I'd put decent credence on 1A, but I don't expect actual population decline. I'd also put decent credence on 1B, but perhaps not indefinitely. There does seem lots of room for further innovation in farming and resource extraction. Furthermore, one could also imagine eventual colonization of other planets.
Secondly, I think you're missing the option I most endorse:
4 Exceeding the planet's carrying capacity (as above) is a sufficiently credible and immediate existential risk to take seriously (but perhaps still is not as credible nor as immediate as other existential risks). However, there are no known interventions at this time to reliably improve our planet's carrying capacity. Therefore, our best option is to try and find these innovations.
I agree with 4 to the degree that I disagree with 1B. I think there's a good chance existing agricultural innovations are already good enough and just need to be deployed. But I don't think funding that is the most cost-effective thing I could be doing.
Lastly, as a nitpick: I don't think asteroid impacts and Rogue AI are in the same category. Asteroid risk is actually fairly well understood, relatively speaking.
Though I fear it hypocritical to mention: perhaps you ought to give some thought to reducing consumption per individual living human instead? Particularly among those who already enjoy the largesse?