the rights of others
What about the right not to be killed? I'd live up to 5-10 years more if society valued longevity as much as I do...society would be defacto responsible for my premature death
What utility would future humans find in reviving cryonically preserved humans ? Besides a cryonically preserved person can't fight to protect his/her own interest to have the cryonic facilities spared during economic crisis , wars , social unrests..... which would surely happen in the future , history has shown time and time again how those who don't or can't fight to protect their interests stand no chance of having their preference on the status of the world met (other agents would force their preference on the status of the world instead)
In other words, you know I'm right but don't want to admit it.
Absolutely , I would never contradict a person so in love with this guy that he'd be willing to die for him , have fun at the front while sane people stay at home
You're confusing Trump with Obama again.
No , you're the one confusing a guy who has great temperament , diplomacy skills and the ability to laugh at himself with a thin-skinned scammer con-artist whose only goal in life is to fuck the next man in the ass and get away with it (think of Trump University and all his other scams).....Who is more likely to start a war?
Ok dude whatever you say...you might want to head here you'll find many likeminded people..
I must say that it really warms my heart that there are people like you out there so that when this maniac brings us to some other useless war in the Middle East or South East Asia there would hopefully be plenty of suckers ready to enroll and go die for him so that mr.Trump would be able keep his immaculate record of never having to concede anything to the counterparty during a negotiation
Only white people would obscurantly try to say Trump is not a great candidate.
Oh god , we're talking about the star of a reality show who had to decide who between Bret Michaels and Cindy Lauper would have been a better CEO for a company that doesn't exist...
Also :
Well , in that case the interests of the majority would prevail
And where did this abundance of resources and inequality come from? Does the dirt north of the Mexican border have somehow magically generate wealth, whereas the dirt south of it tragically doesn't?
Having the most fertile soils in the entire world in the midwest , and having gargantous deposits of coal basically , also being such a large country and enjoying no customs duty or tariffs while the rest of the world had to deal with them and still deals with them today because of the political fragmentation on our planet
...And yet for some reason people buil
and 2 libertarians so what is your problem , dude? They're all 4 equilibrate people regardless of where they stand politically , the same could not be said for a guy who spent 5 millions dollars for having his bathroom plated in gold and sexually assaults women given that you're so concerned about rapists
My ideal election would have been Paul vs Sanders vs Johnson vs Stein.....never supported Hillary
Which may explain why Europe is currently being flooded with Muslim youths who are creating no go zones in European cities and engaging in large amounts of rape and other crimes.
Immigration will have a net positive effect on the economy of these countries , criminals are criminals and just as always would be prosecuted , also rape is not as damaging as it was for a population because of birth control , morning after pill and abortion , rapists are getting bred out at a fast rate
You seem to be implying that's a bad thing.
Ehm...channeling public money...
The whole "most variations from the equilibria are disasters", only really works if you share my guy's mania about valuing the other team's welfare
You know , there was one other guy who wasn't preoccupied at all about the other team's welfare , that guy was John Von Neumann and were he able to have it his way he would have cold bloodedly killed 600 millions people between USSR and China in 1955 when US had B52s and thermonuclear bombs ironed out , while he could have used his intelligence and technical wisdom to deescalate tension with the ult...
Trump's victory calls for serious reflections on how people see the government as the enabler of change in environmental policies :
No meaningful change is ever enforced from the top , we should start dedicating a bit of our time and money to convince those who see their financial future jeopardized by the policies on climate change (e.g. coal and oil&gas workers) and not just talk and discuss with people who already agree with us . If we fail to do this we'd have a situation where people would feel threatened , abandoned and full of resentments towa
Isn't that a bit excessive reaction for a rationality forum?
But are they taken online or not? Some women , especially self proclaimed feminists who voted for Trump would never tell that in front of a microphone
Also are there any online polls/exit polls regarding women? I suspect that in the privacy of the booth the high status alpha male personality of Donald Trump might have had some not accounted for effect , online polls could still have people lying about their vote and age/gender/race , but eliminate the shy voter variable which I suspect was pretty big with a character like DJT
Prediction : Trump will channel public money through his companies in order build "public" infrastructures , I honestly can't say if he's gonna move forward and build the great wall of the americas though
Ok so back to the question I asked you above...shouldn't people like me get some sort of compensation for the months , possibly years lost because society interprets "optimal" and "important" in a different way?
Everything has a cost but sometimes the cost is worth paying. If you're optimizing for total pleasure/consumption/etc. over your lifetime then if you're 20 you expect to have 50-70 years ahead of you and you would plan to spend your existing and expected-in-the-future resources over this whole time.
And I perfectly agree with that , my only claim is that if society were to put more weight on longevity and less on QoL we'd reach an optimal balance by not having to renounce to anything important plus we'd not have any regrets later on
but I don't see why it would matter whether I'm 20 at the time (presumably far away from death) or 80 (presumably close to death anyway)
Again , everything has a cost
You won't have any money to pay for your treatment at 80 if you squandered it all partying (QoL) at 20 , people do that all the time , they give up QoL in the present in order to be able to afford medical treatments (lifetime extension) in the future...it's called retirement planning
This would be true if you didn't know what would your preference be in the future ; but you know that , you know that as you'd be getting closer and closer to death you'd be willing to sacrifice more QoL than you're willing to sacrifice now , so why not making a sacrifice now and give to the future you more minutes and less regrets?
Ok , so does this mean that you're in favor of a depenalization of both commerce and consumption of all drugs , alcohol and prostitution with no age restriction?
Nope, not true. Willing to sacrifice QoL for longer life in the old age does not mean you necessarily regret what you did when you're young.
How so? The future you wants to live longer and he/she would have been able to do so if he/she renounced to some QoL in the past , the future you can't live in good memories of past enjoyed QoL , he/she needs time.
Sure. What's the problem with voluntary transactions? They are useless to you, but not to other people. Do you know what's useless and what's not better than everyone else?
A person who regularly buys opiates is making a voluntary transaction too , society acts to stop these transactions because they damage collectivity (costs for society being : healthcare , unemployment , crime , loss of productivity...) , by the same token you could argue that mining , polishing , transporting and selling a useless rock like a ruby has some undesirable costs for society
You do recognize that other people are different from you..?
Drug addicts and alcoholics are different from me too....but society paints them as people with disturbs who need to be cured , because those of us not drinking and not doing drugs somehow know better than them and know what is better for them (and for us given that we always calculate the cost of drugs on society , healthcare and economy)
Also would you consider moral somebody who sells a bunch of useless rocks like opals , rubies....for 200k? Society paints drug dealers as evil making money of...
you're willing to sacrifice pretty much all quality of life (QoL) if that gives you more longevity.
Yes , but in the specific case I should point out that for me is a no brainer because entertainment doesn't add anything to my QoL
I'm arguing that quality of life is important and that at a certain point (which is different for different people) you would stop trading off QoL for longevity. And if you overshoot this point, you would be willing to live a shorter life, but with higher QoL.
Are you suggesting that I should live a shorter life just because ...
in this case you're just opimizing for longevity and consumption has nothing do with it
This is wrong , and I'm quoting you , a dozen post above you claimed that everything has a cost we've already discussed this :
1) if all people who worked in entertainment moved to do something useful , we'd consume less and live a longer , but (you argued) less satisfying life
2) If a person didn't blew 25k for a front seat at the Superbowl he'd now have money for that experimental treatment that would prolong his/her life
3) If you're convinced of what you're saying , ...
optimize to keep his consumption rate above zero for the longest time
Sounds about as plausible to me.
It is , but a rational person would still optimize to keep his consumption rate above zero for the longest time instead of having one big peak and then a tragic collapse and crash on the x-axis
Is this what you empirically observe humans do? Doesn't look like that to me.
People who are low in the social scale (your example of being a slave) want to elevate themselves so they'll have more freedom of action
Also people avoid doing stuff that could endanger them because they want to avoid their future freedom of action to drop to zero (death)
is not obvious
Well , without venturing into a deep level of understanding of the urban sewer...you'd have to work to the outdoor latrine , that would waste calories and time you'd have not otherwise wasted
Why is it worth so much?
It might not be worth so much now , but it would be worth a lot in the future , that's the whole point ... While all your friends and acknowledges die , you'd still have 5-10 years to live
Plus it's not like we have some other choice , this is what we do as humans , we optimze processes and act to maximize future freedom o...
So are you claiming that you DON'T consider a person who spends 200k in jewelry to be mentally ill ? 200k for a bunch of rocks...
Second, and more empirically, many people in their 80s say they are basically waiting to die, and not because their lives are awful, but because they think they lived long enough. And perhaps they will still say they want one more day, but perhaps not, especially for the above reason.
They are simply , wrong , or if you prefer they have a limited vision , they think that they have experienced everything that there is to life , but if they lived longer new cool stuff to experience would emerge and so forth
This goes back to my question about 60 years as a rich first-worlder or 80 years as a tropical subsistence farmer. Or, if you want, it goes back to at least the Achilles' choice in Iliad.
I'll take 80 years as a subsistence farmer over 60 years as Bill "fired my co-founder and childhood friend while he was dying of cancer" Gates any time , because he'll run out of options and will have his freedom of action reduced to a big fat zero 20 years earlier than the farmer
That's an empirical claim. Do you have evidence?
The burden of the proof is on you because your activity wastes way more resources than mine , and such particular activity also wastes way more resources than your other activity you mentioned before (guitar playing)
Why not? And if you can't, why would you allow a plumber or a massage, but not a video game? Can you quantify increased productivity from a working toilet?
Oh c'mon now....Both your Xbox and your toilet both stop working , which one are you more relived once it has been repaired? Right ....there is always a hierarchy of priorities .
Ah, there we go.
Do you think other people MUST have the same goal and if they don't they are mistaken?
Well yes , because if ask you the question today you'll answer me that you want to live one more day , if I ask you the same question tomorrow you'll still answer me that you want to live one more day....and so forth... then you must plan in advance in order to make it happen ; If you fail to plan ; you plan to fail
2 An instrumental goal, because the more people that are working on life extension, FAI, or whatever, the sooner we will achieve it
Exactly
If #1, it is unclear to me why you would think that a large population is so desirable that you are willing to give up biodiversity, meat, pandas, Netflix, etc., to achieve it.
To get there (WBE , life extension , the maintenance approach by Audrey de Grey , understanding of consciousness , AGI that would preserve our consciousness) faster than we would otherwise
...If #2, I am not confident that a huge population
I don't think that there's a significant number of people who buy Tesla's but who don't feel financially secure enough to get children. What makes you think that's the case?
In fact people who want to have children vote with their wallet and buy a 2003 Mercedes C 240 selling at 4k or even better they use public transport to go to work and other activities ; people buying Teslas at 75k are 99% the same people who used to buy Mustangs and Corvettes at 75k , they have not a worry in the world financially..
...People dying from illness is not morally equiva
Let's take the case that X = mattress. I don't think you have any objections to this trade, do you? I expect you to agree that mattress-makers are useful and should be paid for their work.
Nothing to say here , we need that stuff
Let's take the case that X = a working toilet. Again, plumbers are useful and it doesn't look to be a terribly fun job so if you want a working toilet, you probably want a professional plumber and he'd want to be paid. Still good?
Nothing to say here , we need that stuff
...Let's take the case that X = massage. Any problems star
If you argue that people don't die due to the pollution produced by cars in cities than you are simply out of touch with empiric reality. There's a reason why we had the biggest fine to a corporation lately for overpopulation due to cars. It's a serious issue.
Couples not having kids because they are not financially secure too.....That's a human life lost too...how can you value more one or the other , you simply can't
...Not when it comes to harming their neighbors. Pollution does harm people and kills people. You don't solve issues of the tragedy of the
Shouldn't you be overwhelmingly concerned with increasing fertility, then? Given the current trends, the human population is expected to stabilize (or maybe even peak) at a level below 10 billion people. Some first-world countries (e.g. Japan) already have a declining population.
I am , but at the same time overwhelming poverty signals that we must be more efficient in how we allocate resources too...having 15 billions humans living on Earth but only having 4 billions actively participating in problem solving is not the goal
...Does this mean that you expl
What specific terminal value or values are you optimizing towards? And, what is the "our cause" that you refer to above?
Human population growth , being able successfully support 15/20 billions humans on our planet , while making sure that each and everyone of them receives the daily dose of calories and proteins necessary to fully develop mentally and physically , get connected to infrastructure and cyberinfrastructure so that we would have more brainpower to solve our problems . People think that with automation and machine learning we should...
You contradict yourself within a single sentence. If the performance is something that helps people "be productive the next day" then surely it contributes something to the society.
As it contributes playing guitar , acting and dancing yourself , arguably more , so I don't see why you should pay or elevate him given that he doesn't have a monopoly over activities which help people being productive the following day
...Why isn't producing widgets "an unproductive use of brainpower"? I bet there are a lot of material things which you con
We are not talking about sleep and if you think people will burn out without time off, won't they burn out without any entertainment available? It was available throughout the entire human history. You try to draw a sharp boundary between amateur and professional entertainment, but I don't see that line. If I go to see my friend who sings and plays a guitar, is it fine? If ten of us go, is it fine? If a hundred, a thousand people gather, is it still fine?
Yes as long as he has a real job and sings and plays guitar to alleviate stress in his 2 hours free ...
Why so? Surely the waste could be minimized. Since you're making wholesale adjustments to the society anyway, why not eliminate all this unproductive "time off"?
It cannot be done , people need sleep and time off otherwise they'd burn out
Would it? I don't find it likely
They'd not literally work on life extension , life extension is the ultimate layer of complexity , very few people in sports and entertainment could work on that , such people could be employed in infrastructure and cyberinfrastructure for example , both would serve indirectl...
What about laws in place to punish those who run over people and kill them because their goal is to get wherever they need to go as fast as possible ? We punish these people..also we punish those who drive recklessly because they harm society as a whole by pursuing their goal