That essay is advising optimizing the log odds of survival when the odds of survival are 0%.
People at the end of their lives may have a do-not-resuscitate policy because they want the dignity of dying on their own terms and not leaving behind a mangled corpse and medical debt. But a DNR policy doesn’t maximize log odds of survival.
Other people may choose to be cryogenically frozen in a country with legal euthanasia, which maximizes log odds of survival. For them, that is a dignified choice. But it’s an unusual set of values and actions.
On LW I see people using the term in both the general way and the specific way. So I think you are both right.
These are fine points about differing values and actions, but I do want to defend that Eliezer is explicitly using the concept of dignity in the standard way (i.e. acting in a way worthy of respect). There is a kind of dignity in choosing to end your life when you are well and happy rather than when you are broken and in pain, which is not the same as maximizing log odds of survival, but nonetheless Eliezer’s essay is explicitly claiming that the latter is what it means for a civilization to act with dignity.
“Wait, dignity points?” you ask. “What are those? In what units are they measured, exactly?”
And to this I reply: Obviously, the measuring units of dignity are over humanity’s log odds of survival—the graph on which the logistic success curve is a straight line. A project that doubles humanity’s chance of survival from 0% to 0% is helping humanity die with one additional information-theoretic bit of dignity.
That essay is advising optimizing the log odds of survival when the odds of survival are 0%.
People at the end of their lives may have a do-not-resuscitate policy because they want the dignity of dying on their own terms and not leaving behind a mangled corpse and medical debt. But a DNR policy doesn’t maximize log odds of survival.
Other people may choose to be cryogenically frozen in a country with legal euthanasia, which maximizes log odds of survival. For them, that is a dignified choice. But it’s an unusual set of values and actions.
On LW I see people using the term in both the general way and the specific way. So I think you are both right.
These are fine points about differing values and actions, but I do want to defend that Eliezer is explicitly using the concept of dignity in the standard way (i.e. acting in a way worthy of respect). There is a kind of dignity in choosing to end your life when you are well and happy rather than when you are broken and in pain, which is not the same as maximizing log odds of survival, but nonetheless Eliezer’s essay is explicitly claiming that the latter is what it means for a civilization to act with dignity.