Ming’s minions burst in and abduct you to the planet Ming. “So!” smiles Ming the Merciless in his merciless way, “My astronomers and physicists, who have had thousands of years to improve their sciences beyond your primitive level, assure me that all this will pass, yes, even I myself! One day it will be as if none had ever lived! Just rocks and dead stars, and insufficient complexity to ever again assemble creatures such as us, though it last a Graham number of years!”
“Tell me, knowing this—and I am as known for my honesty as for my evil, for see! I have not executed my scientists for telling me an unwelcome truth—are you truly indifferent as to whether I let you go, or hand you over to my torturers? Does this touch of the branding iron mean nothing?”
I feel like pointing out that Graham’s number is big enough that if the universe lasted that long, it would effectively visit every state it possibly can, unless the universe is fucking huge.
I am not completely indifferent to being tortured, so in your hypothetical, Kennaway, I will try to get Ming to let me go because in your hypothetical I know I cannot have a permanent effect on reality.
But when faced with a choice between having a positive permanent effect on reality and avoiding being tortured I’ll always choose having the permanent effect if I can.
Almost everybody gives in under torture. Almost everyone will eventually tell an interrogator skilled in torture everything they know, e.g., the passphrase to the rebel mainframe. Since I have no reason to believe I am any different in that regard, there are limits to my ability to choose the way I said. But for most practical purposes, I can and will choose the way I said. In particular, I think I can calmly choose being tortured over losing my ability to have a permanent effect on reality: it is just that once the torture actually starts, I will probably lose my resolve.
I am worried, Kennaway, that our conversation about my way of valuing things will distract you from what I wrote below about the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder from a surgical procedure. Your scenario is less than ideal for exploring what intrinsic value people assign to internal experience: it is better to present people with a choice of being killed painlessly and being killed after 24 hours of intense pain and then asking what benefit to their best friend or to humanity would induce them to choose the intense pain.
*jangling chord*
Ming’s minions burst in and abduct you to the planet Ming. “So!” smiles Ming the Merciless in his merciless way, “My astronomers and physicists, who have had thousands of years to improve their sciences beyond your primitive level, assure me that all this will pass, yes, even I myself! One day it will be as if none had ever lived! Just rocks and dead stars, and insufficient complexity to ever again assemble creatures such as us, though it last a Graham number of years!”
“Tell me, knowing this—and I am as known for my honesty as for my evil, for see! I have not executed my scientists for telling me an unwelcome truth—are you truly indifferent as to whether I let you go, or hand you over to my torturers? Does this touch of the branding iron mean nothing?”
*sizzle*
I feel like pointing out that Graham’s number is big enough that if the universe lasted that long, it would effectively visit every state it possibly can, unless the universe is fucking huge.
I am not completely indifferent to being tortured, so in your hypothetical, Kennaway, I will try to get Ming to let me go because in your hypothetical I know I cannot have a permanent effect on reality.
But when faced with a choice between having a positive permanent effect on reality and avoiding being tortured I’ll always choose having the permanent effect if I can.
Almost everybody gives in under torture. Almost everyone will eventually tell an interrogator skilled in torture everything they know, e.g., the passphrase to the rebel mainframe. Since I have no reason to believe I am any different in that regard, there are limits to my ability to choose the way I said. But for most practical purposes, I can and will choose the way I said. In particular, I think I can calmly choose being tortured over losing my ability to have a permanent effect on reality: it is just that once the torture actually starts, I will probably lose my resolve.
I am worried, Kennaway, that our conversation about my way of valuing things will distract you from what I wrote below about the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder from a surgical procedure. Your scenario is less than ideal for exploring what intrinsic value people assign to internal experience: it is better to present people with a choice of being killed painlessly and being killed after 24 hours of intense pain and then asking what benefit to their best friend or to humanity would induce them to choose the intense pain.