Notice that with a mattress you’re buying a physical thing. With a plumber, you’re buying a service (as in, “you’d need another person”). A massage is just another service. You might not need one but someone whose, say, neck and shoulders are stiff from a day of working, could well benefit. You keep on applying your solutions to yourself, but other people are not like you.
No way a video game makes you more productive the following day than a massage 1hr of cardio or 2 hrs of guitar playing
That’s an empirical claim. Do you have evidence?
there would be no way to quantify your increased productivity
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?
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 .
Since I am not asking for a major restructuring of the society, I don’t think so.
Both your Xbox and your toilet both stop working , which one are you more relived once it has been repaired?
You start from the axiom that my desires are wrong. The only thing you care about is my productivity and how helpful it is to bringing the Glorious Future closer. Given this, how relieved (heh) I am is irrelevant. The issue is whether using, say, outdoor latrines will reduce my productivity and the answer to that is not obvious.
More generally, caring only about the Glorious Future and considering real, observable human desires to be “wrong” has been tried in several variations, a notable one being Puritanism. But the Puritans had proper motivation: at stake was eternal life (and bliss) or eternal suffering. That’s worth a lot. But all you want is a bit longer life which you will spend likely in a not-great physical and mental condition. Why is it worth so much?
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 of action , death is the equivalent of zero freedom of action and we want our freedom of action not to drop to zero
It might not be worth so much now , but it would be worth a lot in the future
How do you know that? Future is uncertain.
Plus it’s not like we have some other choice , this is what we do as humans
This is clearly false, since you want to reject most of what humans actually do.
we optimze processes and act to maximize future freedom of action
Is this what you empirically observe humans do? Doesn’t look like that to me.
There are other ways to have little freedom of action besides death, too. One is being a slave. Another is lying in bed with advanced Alzheimers and machines keeping your body alive.
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
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
If you actually want to optimize for total consumption over a lifetime, 60 years of being rich in the first world is MUCH better than 80 years of being poor in the third.
In this case you’re just opimizing for longevity and consumption has nothing do with it. You could easily replace it with, say, “optimize to keep his pulse above zero for the longest time”.
And remember your first example, of a slave who wants more? Note: not “for longer”, but “more”.
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 , why are you discussing with me on a forum on rationality instead of having your personal consumption peak , book an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora , get there in a private jet , spend 3 week in total debauchery while binge drinking , sniffing and injecting substances?? You won’t have money left for food afterwards but given that consumption has nothing to do with lifespan you’d be fine
You are arguing that longevity is of supreme importance. Specifically, you’re willing to sacrifice pretty much all quality of life (QoL) if that gives you more longevity.
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.
Everything has a cost and in this situation as we set it up the QoL is the cost for longevity.
With respect to your points, (1) is the starting assumption (I’m leaving aside the issue of whether it’s actually true); (2) is true, but so what?; and (3) is not true because if we’re talking about optimization, when you optimize consumption it should be the lifetime total consumption (probably weighted by your ability to enjoy it) -- not the height of a single short peak.
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 society has a different QoL cutoff than mine ? Is that your solution , i should just suck it up and die sooner because of this? If that is your position , shouldn’t people like me get a compensation at least ?
is not true because if we’re talking about optimization, when you optimize consumption it should be the lifetime total consumption (probably weighted by your ability to enjoy it) -- not the height of a single short peak.
If you embarked for such vacation , you would not have any lifetime left once it ended , because you would have traded all your remaining lifetime for concentrated QoL .
1) So are you claiming that QoL and lifetime are equally important? And if that is your position why don’t you embark for such vacation given that if you think that lifetime and QoL are equally important it’s basically the same thing as living a long life ? Are you not doing it because such concentrated QoL would not be worth the trade with lifetime because of law of diminishing returns?
2) If lifetime is more important than QoL why not just optimize for lifetime?
3) If your formula is a balance between lifetime and QoL are you aware that as you get closer to death your balance would move more and more towards lifetime and at some point you’d find yourself willing to trade any quality of life left for even a minute more to live ? So in that sense the future you is mad at the present you for having put too much weight on QoL , in fact he/she finds himself/herself facing death sooner than it would otherwise happened because of the present you putting too much weight on QoL
You haven’t been talking about your personal preferences. You’ve been talking about what should be banned, made illegal. Moreover, you’ve been calling people who don’t share your preferences mentally ill.
different QoL cutoff
QoL has no cutoffs (other than death) -- it’s a continuous variable.
So are you claiming that QoL and lifetime are equally important?
No, I’m claiming they’re both important but not necessarily equally. Moreover, if you could make an indifference graph (put life length of the X axis, put QoL on the Y axis, plot points for different x and y such that you are indifferent between the combinations, connect the points) I doubt the lines would be straight.
it’s basically the same thing as living a long life ?
No, it’s not the same thing. Besides, there are limits on how high could you get the QoL peak—you just can’t jam a year’s worth of pleasures into a single day.
If lifetime is more important than QoL why not just optimize for lifetime?
Because when multiple things are important, trying to optimize for only one of them rarely leads to good outcomes.
as you get closer to death your balance would move more and more towards lifetime
I don’t see that as obvious. Look at e.g. euthanasia debates. Some people do trade most of their QoL for additional minutes of life, others do not.
So in that sense the future you is mad at the present you for having put too much weight on QoL
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.
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.
You are confusing choosing more life at the cost of reduced QoL in that future life with wishing for a longer life and being willing to sacrifice QoL in the past.
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?
This would be true if you didn’t know what would your preference be in the future
Guess what, you do NOT know your preferences in the future. Things change.
Also, I’m not sure what does “as you’d be getting closer and closer to death you’d be willing to sacrifice more QoL” mean. Let’s say I have a choice between dying in the near future and undergoing some treatment which will leave me in permanent pain for the rest of my life. Let’s say I choose the treatment—that’s a clear “sacrifice QoL for longevity” trade-off—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). In fact, I suspect that more 80-year-old will refuse the treatment than 20-year-olds.
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
You seem to like attacking a strawman where any resources you have you spend immediately on pleasure. I don’t know of anyone who suggests this is a good idea. Nothing I said implies that retirement planning is unnecessary.
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.
By the way, are you practicing caloric restriction? It’s the only life prolong treatment which has been shown to work consistently. Most people don’t do it because you lead a pretty miserable life, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you..?
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
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?
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?
If you claim a right to compensation, there must be a matching duty on the part of someone. Who has the duty to compensate you and why?
Oh, and let’s flip the question, too. Shouldn’t other people get some sort of compensation from you because you interpret “optimal” and “important” in a different way?
Notice that with a mattress you’re buying a physical thing. With a plumber, you’re buying a service (as in, “you’d need another person”). A massage is just another service. You might not need one but someone whose, say, neck and shoulders are stiff from a day of working, could well benefit. You keep on applying your solutions to yourself, but other people are not like you.
That’s an empirical claim. Do you have evidence?
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?
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)
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 .
Since I am not asking for a major restructuring of the society, I don’t think so.
You start from the axiom that my desires are wrong. The only thing you care about is my productivity and how helpful it is to bringing the Glorious Future closer. Given this, how relieved (heh) I am is irrelevant. The issue is whether using, say, outdoor latrines will reduce my productivity and the answer to that is not obvious.
More generally, caring only about the Glorious Future and considering real, observable human desires to be “wrong” has been tried in several variations, a notable one being Puritanism. But the Puritans had proper motivation: at stake was eternal life (and bliss) or eternal suffering. That’s worth a lot. But all you want is a bit longer life which you will spend likely in a not-great physical and mental condition. Why is it worth so much?
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
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 of action , death is the equivalent of zero freedom of action and we want our freedom of action not to drop to zero
How do you know that? Future is uncertain.
This is clearly false, since you want to reject most of what humans actually do.
Is this what you empirically observe humans do? Doesn’t look like that to me.
There are other ways to have little freedom of action besides death, too. One is being a slave. Another is lying in bed with advanced Alzheimers and machines keeping your body alive.
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)
You don’t like consumption, right? Let’s try substituting in this word:
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
If you actually want to optimize for total consumption over a lifetime, 60 years of being rich in the first world is MUCH better than 80 years of being poor in the third.
optimize to keep his consumption rate above zero for the longest time
In this case you’re just opimizing for longevity and consumption has nothing do with it. You could easily replace it with, say, “optimize to keep his pulse above zero for the longest time”.
And remember your first example, of a slave who wants more? Note: not “for longer”, but “more”.
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 , why are you discussing with me on a forum on rationality instead of having your personal consumption peak , book an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora , get there in a private jet , spend 3 week in total debauchery while binge drinking , sniffing and injecting substances?? You won’t have money left for food afterwards but given that consumption has nothing to do with lifespan you’d be fine
You sound confused. Let’s make things simple.
You are arguing that longevity is of supreme importance. Specifically, you’re willing to sacrifice pretty much all quality of life (QoL) if that gives you more longevity.
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.
Everything has a cost and in this situation as we set it up the QoL is the cost for longevity.
With respect to your points, (1) is the starting assumption (I’m leaving aside the issue of whether it’s actually true); (2) is true, but so what?; and (3) is not true because if we’re talking about optimization, when you optimize consumption it should be the lifetime total consumption (probably weighted by your ability to enjoy it) -- not the height of a single short peak.
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
Are you suggesting that I should live a shorter life just because society has a different QoL cutoff than mine ? Is that your solution , i should just suck it up and die sooner because of this? If that is your position , shouldn’t people like me get a compensation at least ?
If you embarked for such vacation , you would not have any lifetime left once it ended , because you would have traded all your remaining lifetime for concentrated QoL .
1) So are you claiming that QoL and lifetime are equally important? And if that is your position why don’t you embark for such vacation given that if you think that lifetime and QoL are equally important it’s basically the same thing as living a long life ? Are you not doing it because such concentrated QoL would not be worth the trade with lifetime because of law of diminishing returns?
2) If lifetime is more important than QoL why not just optimize for lifetime?
3) If your formula is a balance between lifetime and QoL are you aware that as you get closer to death your balance would move more and more towards lifetime and at some point you’d find yourself willing to trade any quality of life left for even a minute more to live ? So in that sense the future you is mad at the present you for having put too much weight on QoL , in fact he/she finds himself/herself facing death sooner than it would otherwise happened because of the present you putting too much weight on QoL
You haven’t been talking about your personal preferences. You’ve been talking about what should be banned, made illegal. Moreover, you’ve been calling people who don’t share your preferences mentally ill.
QoL has no cutoffs (other than death) -- it’s a continuous variable.
No, I’m claiming they’re both important but not necessarily equally. Moreover, if you could make an indifference graph (put life length of the X axis, put QoL on the Y axis, plot points for different x and y such that you are indifferent between the combinations, connect the points) I doubt the lines would be straight.
No, it’s not the same thing. Besides, there are limits on how high could you get the QoL peak—you just can’t jam a year’s worth of pleasures into a single day.
Because when multiple things are important, trying to optimize for only one of them rarely leads to good outcomes.
I don’t see that as obvious. Look at e.g. euthanasia debates. Some people do trade most of their QoL for additional minutes of life, others do not.
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.
You are confusing choosing more life at the cost of reduced QoL in that future life with wishing for a longer life and being willing to sacrifice QoL in the past.
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?
Guess what, you do NOT know your preferences in the future. Things change.
Also, I’m not sure what does “as you’d be getting closer and closer to death you’d be willing to sacrifice more QoL” mean. Let’s say I have a choice between dying in the near future and undergoing some treatment which will leave me in permanent pain for the rest of my life. Let’s say I choose the treatment—that’s a clear “sacrifice QoL for longevity” trade-off—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). In fact, I suspect that more 80-year-old will refuse the treatment than 20-year-olds.
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
You seem to like attacking a strawman where any resources you have you spend immediately on pleasure. I don’t know of anyone who suggests this is a good idea. Nothing I said implies that retirement planning is unnecessary.
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.
By the way, are you practicing caloric restriction? It’s the only life prolong treatment which has been shown to work consistently. Most people don’t do it because you lead a pretty miserable life, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you..?
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
Different people will interpret “optimal” and “important” in very different ways. You should know this since you offer a minority viewpoint.
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?
If you claim a right to compensation, there must be a matching duty on the part of someone. Who has the duty to compensate you and why?
Oh, and let’s flip the question, too. Shouldn’t other people get some sort of compensation from you because you interpret “optimal” and “important” in a different way?