linkhyrule5

This article was composed after reading Torture vs. Dust Specks and Circular Altruism, at which point I noticed that I was confused. Both posts deal with versions of the sacred-values effect, where one value is considered "sacred" and cannot be traded for a "secular" value, no matter the ratio. In effect, the sacred value has infinite utility relative to the secular value. This is, of course, silly. We live in a scarce world with scarce resources; generally, a secular utilon can be used to purchase sacred ones - giving money to charity to save lives, sending cheap laptops to poor regions to improve their standard of education. Which implies that the entire idea of "tiers" of value is silly, right? Well... no. One of the reasons we are not still watching the Sun revolve around us, while we breath a continuous medium of elemental Air and phlogiston flows out of our wall-torches, is our ability to simplify problems. There's an infamous joke about the physicist who, asked to measure the volume of a cow, begins "Assume the cow is a sphere..." - but this sort of simplification, willfully ignoring complexities and invoking the airless, frictionless plane, can give us crucial insights. Consider, then, this gedankenexperiment. If there's a flaw in my conclusion, please explain; I'm aware I appear to be opposingthe consensus. The Weight of a Life: Or, Seat Cushions This entire universe consists of an empty white room, the size of a large stadium. In it are you, Frank, and occasionally an omnipotent AI we'll call Omega. (Assume, if you wish, that Omega is running this room in simulation; it's not currently relevant.) Frank is irrelevant, except for the fact that he is known to exist. Now, looking at our utility function here... Well, clearly, the old standby of using money to measure utility isn't going to work; without a trading partner money's just fancy paper (or metal, or plastic, or whatever.) But let's say that the floor of this room is made of cold, hard, an