my point is the CEO should stay relatively silent , away from the public eye
I am sure you have an opinion, but is there any particular reason you think yours is special? You seem to be unusually confident of how other people should behave.
but is there any particular reason you think yours is special?
Because when CEOs stay relatively silent , away from the public eye , personality cults don’t emerge and only numbers do the talking (balance sheets , customer reviews , hours worked by employees , their salary...) so people would immediately question fishy and/or hypocrite behaviors , which is something desirable
I’m still not sure what are you optimising for. Are you concerned about the virtue of the CEOs? about maximising the economic growth of the company? about political oversight over companies?
Notably, the canonical example of a narcissistic PR-obsessed CEO is Steve Jobs. He… did rather well.
Society , average quality of life , average lifespan
Notably, the canonical example of a narcissistic PR-obsessed CEO is Steve Jobs. He… did rather well.
He did , society on the other hand , polluted by toxic concepts like the ones promoted by him and Mark Zuckerberg....not so much...Steve Jobs transformed a phone from being a useful , practical tool into a luxurious status symbol people feel the need to upgrade every 6 months , people praise him for having done such thing, but I honestly fail to grasp how this is a desirable outcome , Zuckerberg did the exact same thing with personal blogs...people used to care about the content they put online in their personal blog...now it’s all about selfies wasting bandwidth , hosting space and electricity...on top of that you have companies paying to claim their rights to use such platform to forcefully push down people throats stuff they don’t even need...Puking....so much brainpower terribly allocated..companies like AAPL (mobile division), FB and Sony for that matter (even though there isn’t a cult of personality around the CEO , though there is a corporate cult) have done so much damage in terms of resources wasted (brainpower , capital , electricity , hosting space , raw materials) and people are lining up to elevate CEOs due to the huge cult of personality around them....Companies which don’t invest in PR and corporate cult instead get destroyed by the press and the general public even though they move the world (Saudi Aramco , Exxon , BP , Royal Dutch Shell , Sinopec) and are not trying to forcefully push products down people’s throats but instead providing stuff which is (as of today) objectively necessary like petroleum and gas products which (as of today) constitutes the foundation of the world’s economy on top of which narcissistic PR-obsessed CEOs can build their empire and pontificate on global warming from their oil powered private jets...If you think about it the damage is comparable ; big oil poisons the biosphere (but as of today we could not live without) while FB , AAPL (mobile division) and Sony poison the minds (other than creating damages because of wasted resources like energy , electricity , raw materials...)
I agree that selling stuff like ITER or IV Gen nuclear reactors or HVDC power lines to the general public or convincing people to donate/invest in companies working on such solutions might seem to far fetched , we won’t ever see people walking people wearing Siemens or Toshiba or ABB t-shirts either....but avoiding selling them shit would surely be a good a good leap forward
Society , average quality of life , average lifespan
“Society”, I don’t know what that means. For the average quality of life and lifespan the propensity of CEOs to personal aggrandisement is basically irrelevant.
Steve Jobs transformed a phone from being a useful , practical tool into a luxurious status symbol people feel the need to upgrade every 6 months
Nope. Jobs transformed a phone from a voice communications device to a personal computer that’s always with you. There are a lot of consequences to that, both good and bad, but the rise of smartphones is not about status symbols. Not to mention that I don’t know anyone who changes her phone every six months. And Facebook is about the power of the (social) network, not about personal blogs at all.
so much brainpower terribly allocated
So you don’t like market allocation? You want central planning?
You sound like you’re generally unhappy with the world.
the propensity of CEOs to personal aggrandisement is basically irrelevant.
That is wrong , because CEOs who have a cult following use their status to shape the future of society , Musk is de facto using his influence to de facto burn out kids straight out of collage in order to reach the goal of colonizing Mars
What if we used that brainpower to understand what consciousness is in order to perhaps one day have Whole Brain Emulation instead ? At that point we could have an Earth with the average surface temperature of 150F and no biological life on it and we’d still be able to thrive if we had enough energy to support ourselves , plus it would make space travel far easier , this would (positively) impact our quality of life and lifespan quite substantially , much more than colonizing Mars , so you could argue that Musk with his actions is having a negative impact on society by using his influence to allocate brainpower in a suboptimal way
And Facebook is about the power of the (social) network, not about personal blogs at all.
And gathering data so people could have products they don’t need forcefully pushed down their throats more efficiently....
So you don’t like market allocation? You want central planning?
With limited use central planning might be good....tell me for example what utility does the entertainment industry have for society , or the sports industry , or the music industry for that matter , that’s all wasted brainpower that could be employed in energy , healthcare , infrastructure (the important stuff) . Plus these people are elevated by society and paid millions for their (non)contribution to society...this encourages people to become non contributing member of society (actors , musicians , athletes) themselves....people like Kimkardshian , Tiger Woods , Katty Perry....what is their contribution to society? Zip , still they are sitting over 400M each...that would not happen with (limited) central planning
CEOs who have a cult following use their status to shape the future of society
That’s a pretty crowded space, with the rock stars, baseball pitchers, K-pop singers, politicians, etc. etc. all milling in there. I still don’t think the CEOs’ influence is noticeable.
With limited use central planning might be good....tell me for example what utility does the entertainment industry have for society
Boggle. Pretty much every person on Earth voluntarily gives money to the entertainment industry in exchange for entertainment. You think they all are wrong and should be prevented from doing that? No music for you? No games, no movies, no nothing?
I don’t know if I expected dour puritanism (defined as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”) to resurface here...
That’s a pretty crowded space, with the rock stars, baseball pitchers, K-pop singers, politicians, etc. etc. all milling in there. I still don’t think the CEOs influence is noticeable.
I just made you the Musk example on colonizing Mars vs Whole Brain Emulation
Boggle. Pretty much every person on Earth voluntarily gives money to the entertainment industry in exchange for entertainment. You think they all are wrong and should be prevented from doing that? No music for you? No games, no movies, no nothing?
They are wrong because that brainpower (musicians , athletes , actors , TV authors and presenters) could be used for example (if redirected to healthcare) to extend their lives or find a cure for the pathology they don’t have yet but they will develop , they are wrong but they don’t know it yet , they’ll find out about how wrong they were when they’ll scramble to get the best experimental treatment but they would not have enough money to pay for it because they spent 15000 to go to the SuperBowl 2 years earlier
Musk example on colonizing Mars vs Whole Brain Emulation
Yes, and I don’t know anyone—and haven’t even heard of anyone—who decided to dedicate his/her life to colonizing Mars because Musk is such an awesome guy.
they are wrong but they don’t know it yet
But you will tell them that they are wrong right now! X-) How’s that working out for you?
Let’s take me. I listen to music, play games, watch movies. You’re saying that’s all WRONG. Instead I should be doing.. what? And why?
Yes, and I don’t know anyone—and haven’t even heard of anyone—who decided to dedicate his/her life to colonizing Mars because Musk is such an awesome guy.
Many kids straight out of collage find themselves with long hours and low pay because they drank the Musk Kool Aid , plus it’s not only people dedicating their lives...in technology many things overlap so people could consider exploring a particular field because it could also have applications in space exploration...also you fail to take into account investors and donators which would flock at Musk but less so with projects like the one of Aubrey De Grey or WBE
But you will tell them that they are wrong right now! X-) How’s that working out for you?
Don’t we do the same with alcoholics , drug addicts , overweight people and suicides ?
Let’s take me. I listen to music, play games, watch movies. You’re saying that’s all WRONG. Instead I should be doing.. what? And why?
Ok so :
1 ) Diminishing these people (actors , musicians , tv host..) influence over society : this can be done quite easily by not buying but pirating every source of entertainment that you consume...there are many warez and torrent tracker out there to satisfy even the most avid consumer
2 ) Don’t ever buy entertainment again , as companies go out of business they will lower their margins and offer way better deals , don’t fall for it
3) Every entertainment/sport business has now gone bankruptcy , no new continent is produced , but you’ll still be able to listen to classic songs , classic movies , classic games...
4) As the consumption of old content becomes not enjoyable anymore , switch to producing your own content for your own enjoyment and consumption (acing with your friends , composing , pick up an instrument and exercise to keep getting better at playing it , practicing sport to relive stress and stay fit , gym , physical exercise.......)
Many kids straight out of collage find themselves with long hours and low pay because they drank the Musk Kool Aid
I don’t think that’s true for reasonable values of “many”. Do you have data?
Ok so
So boycott/pirate until they all go out of business and then produce your own? But didn’t you say that entertainment was a waste of time to start with? Why would I produce my own if it’s a waste of time and brainpower, anyway?
There is also the little problem of specialized skills and coordination of efforts. I can’t make my own animated movies and even if I learn, the results would be bad and the process would be horribly inefficient. Same for most other modern entertainment.
However the really interesting question is why. Why should I strive to kill all professional entertainment production?
So boycott/pirate until they all go out of business and then produce your own? But didn’t you say that entertainment was a waste of time to start with? Why would I produce my own if it’s a waste of time and brainpower, anyway?
No , because you’d do that stuff in your time off , you would have “wasted” those hours (and brainpower) anyway , while as of today people are literally wasting all their lifetime brainpower by choosing a career in entertainment , sports , music , cinema....and instead of being shamed for such non contributive decision they are elevated by society (status , money , influence) , what a lunacy....
There is also the little problem of specialized skills and coordination of efforts. I can’t make my own animated movies and even if I learn, the results would be bad and the process would be horribly inefficient. Same for most other modern entertainment.
Yes , that can’t be done , but you’d still be able to act , play an instrument , dance , do comedy with your friends and so forth...seems a good deal to me
However the really interesting question is why. Why should I strive to kill all professional entertainment production?
Because it would literally extend your life , like in the Super Bowl example I made earlier....all the wasted resources (brainpower , capital , energy , electricity , infrastructures , buildings....) used in the entertainment , sport and music industry could be redirected towards the important things (energy , healthcare , infrastructure , cyberinfrastructure , research , basic research....) , and on top of that we would be able to support more people overall and lifting more people from poverty given that people in such fields are not exactly living a frugal lifestyle and they would contribute to the economy (the important sectors obviously)
you would have “wasted” those hours (and brainpower) anyway
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”?
Because it would literally extend your life
Would it? I don’t find it likely. First, because I am not sure I want people like Jessica Simpson working on life extension, and second, because of Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Also, in the utilitarian language, the entertainment industry creates hedons which are a subtype of utilons. It creates utility. You, personally, don’t seem to value these particular hedons but other people do. Why do you think that taking this utility away is worth the trade-off?
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 indirectly serve the goal of life extension by having equipment and information travel faster
Also, in the utilitarian language, the entertainment industry creates hedons which are a subtype of utilons. It creates utility. You, personally, don’t seem to value these particular hedons but other people do. Why do you think that taking this utility away is worth the trade-off?
hedons : A unit of pleasure used to theoretically weigh people’s happiness
A rational people would always maximize their happiness by maximizing their lifespan
It cannot be done , people need sleep and time off otherwise they’d burn out
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?
If people give money to the singer so that he sings more—how is it different from the people giving money to a widget-producing company so that the company makes more?
A rational people would always maximize their happiness by maximizing their lifespan
That seems to be not true. A trivial example: someone suffering from incurable cancer who faces several months of pain and loss of dignity before the inevitable death. Another example: imagine a choice between living, say, 60 years as a rich citizen of the first world and living 80 years as a subsistence farmer in the malarial swamps of Central Africa. Your choice?
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 time per day, plus you and your friend can go but you must avoid paying him and elevating him in any way (status , influence), you should go with the mindset that this is something you do in order to unwind and be productive the next day but it doesn’t give any contribution to society..your free time should be planned in order to enable you to unwind with the least amount of resources wasted
If people give money to the singer so that he sings more—how is it different from the people giving money to a widget-producing company so that the company makes more?
No that is wrong , because you’d be rewarding an unproductive use of brainpower , now he’d be able to buy food and other necessary stuff with that money you gave him and he will soon find himself doubting if it could be convenient to diminish the hours of the day to dedicate to his real job and increase the hours to dedicate to singing and playing guitar , which is unproductive for society
That seems to be not true. A trivial example: someone suffering from incurable cancer who faces several months of pain and loss of dignity before the inevitable death. Another example: imagine a choice between living, say, 60 years as a rich citizen of the first world and living 80 years as a subsistence farmer in the malarial swamps of Central Africa. Your choice?
FWIW I’ll take 80 years as a farmer over 60 years as a rich citizen and even though I live in the 1st world I limit my consumption to the very strict minimum , certainly I don’t need the opulent lifestyle of the rich people in entertainment and sports like dicaprio or tiger woods...plus yours is a bad example considering how the african subsistence farmer doesn’t surely envy the vast choice of entertainment that his american counterpart have , but energy , healthcare , infrastructure...
this is something you do in order to unwind and be productive the next day but it doesn’t give any contribution to society.
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.
And why do you consider being productive the next day to be the ultimate goal, anyway? Is being economically productive the end goal of all life?
because you’d be rewarding an unproductive use of brainpower
Why isn’t producing widgets “an unproductive use of brainpower”? I bet there are a lot of material things which you consider to be a waste—yachts, jewelry, fancy clothes, etc. -- so why do you single out services, in particular entertainment?
plus yours is a bad example
No, because here we are talking about the trade-off between longer life and quality of life and that doesn’t have much do do specifically with entertainment. Your position is that longer life is worth any sacrifice in the quality of life, is that not so?
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 consider to be a waste—yachts, jewelry, fancy clothes, etc. -- so why do you single out services, in particular entertainment?
Yes we should ban all that stuff too , I mentioned the fashion industry , but I forgot the jewelry industry and the yacht industry , thanks for the remind.
Your position is that longer life is worth any sacrifice in the quality of life, is that not so?
Yes , but in this specific case is not “any sacrifice” I’m explaining you the kind of sacrifice beforehand and I should add that entertainment is at the very top of the MASLOW pyramid , also we’re not even talking about banning enterteinment , you’d be free to play guitar in your free time and entertain your friends if you feel to , you would just not find anybody willing to pay you or elevate your status in exchange for it....differently from real jobs
I want X. X helps me, um, be productive the next day. I can make X myself, but it will be low-quality and making it will be very inefficient. Therefore I want other people to give me X in exchange for money.
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.
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?
Let’s take the case that X = massage. Any problems start to appear?
Let’s take the case that X = video game. We are now in the territory of things you want banned, but what kind of line did we cross? Where is that line?
I should add that entertainment is at the very top of the MASLOW pyramid
Maslow was a guy, it’s not an acronym. And, as far as I remember, at the top of Maslow pyramid is self-actualization which is definitely not entertainment.
you would just not find anybody willing to pay you
You were talking about banning things. As an empirical observation, an overwhelming majority of people are willing to pay artists/entertainers/etc. money in exchange for being entertained.
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 start to appear?
Yes , because while you’d need another person , I just need a couple of shoes and I am ready to jog , hopefully beat my best time , shower , go to sleep , get a good night of sleep and be productive the next day—almost zero resources wasted in the process
Let’s take the case that X = video game. We are now in the territory of things you want banned, but what kind of line did we cross? Where is that line?
No way a video game makes you more productive the following day than a massage 1hr of cardio or 2 hrs of guitar playing , so all the extra resources needed to design , develop , test , ship and run the video game would be pretty much wasted ….and even if that was true there would be no way to quantify your increased productivity and compare it against the resources wasted to see if the whole process is net positive.
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?
I have been following this thread with interest, but I think that I am missing a couple of key pieces of the puzzle as far as understanding your position:
Above, you argue against luxuries (yachts, fashion, jewelry) and professionally produced entertainment so that the human resources used in producing these things could be used towards infrastructure and life-extension. And here you say:
there are thousands of animal species serving no real purpose for our cause and still we slow down our growth because of concerns regarding their survival , not only that , but after having analyzed our daily values and necessities it becomes perfectly crystal clear how we’d only really need the 5 big crops + plants for photosynthesis , insects and impollinators in order to survive and thrive
and
I am all up for … running a railway + HVDC line through the giant panda’s territory , or finally get rid of domesticated animals like cows which convert calories and proteins from grains so poorly .
It seems to me that you are arguing in favor of giving up a lot (e.g. professionally produced entertainment, biodiversity, luxury goods, panda habitats and meat), apparently so as to optimize production towards some specific terminal value or values. So, my questions are:
What specific terminal value or values are you optimizing towards? And, what is the “our cause” that you refer to above?
Here you seem to suggest that these terminal values are not just your values but are the values of all rational people. If so, why do you believe this?
You have argued against the amount of influence that CEOs have in deciding what products should be produced, and here you seem to make the free-market argument that consumers voting with their wallets is a good way for society to decide what products should be produced. But, consumers frequently choose to buy luxury goods, professionally produced entertainment and meat, and at least sometimes appear to value biodiversity. How do you reconcile your pro consumer-choice pro free-market stance with the fact that consumers frequently choose to buy and value things that you think they ought not buy and value?
Following-on from question 3, here you said “Personally I would love the government to outright ban the entertainment industry , the sport industry , gambling , the fashion industry and a whole bunch of other sectors of the economy”. If consumers voting with their wallets really is a good way to decide what products and services should be produced, why would you love the government to ban those things? Shouldn’t the consumer be allowed to vote with his/her wallet? Or, on the other hand, if consumers voting with their wallets is not a good way for society to decide what products and services should be produced, what is? How should this decision be made if not by company executives and not by consumers?
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 diminish our population , in reality humans will be useful to keep around (the more the better ) up until the very second before a recursively improving artificial general intelligence is switched on , and at that point it won’t really matter how many humans lived on our planet because we did things correctly (correctly understand consciousness/flow of consciousness and assign the goal of protecting our consciousness/flow of consciousness to the AGI ) we’d be looking at living much longer than even the most optimist transhumanists think
Here you seem to suggest that these terminal values are not just your values but are the values of all rational people. If so, why do you believe this?
Because once a person’s basic needs are satisfied the rational thing to do is to make sure that such needs will be met in the near and remote future , people in 1st world countries are sure of that in the near future , but the further we look into the future the less sure we are that at any given point all our basic needs would be satisfied , not to mention 3rd world country where people don’t know if they’d be alive 10 or 20 days in the future . People who spend resources (brainpower , money , attention...) on stuff like entertainment , fashion and luxury goods are taking for granted that in the future their basic needs would be satisfied , which is a false assumption
You have argued against the amount of influence that CEOs have in deciding what products should be produced, and here you seem to make the free-market argument that consumers voting with their wallets is a good way for society to decide what products should be produced. But, consumers frequently choose to buy luxury goods, professionally produced entertainment and meat, and at least sometimes appear to value biodiversity. How do you reconcile your pro consumer-choice pro free-market stance with the fact that consumers frequently choose to buy and value things that you think they ought not buy and value?
The “wallet vote” of those spending ( not investing or donating) more than 75k (excluding healthcare) per year should be ignored , they clearly have mental problems and their biggest daily concern is to outdo the Jonses or gain societal status by exhibiting an opulent lifestyle and should be treated the same way we treat alcholics and drug addicts… but like I said I am very well aware that change imposed from the top doesn’t ever work so rational people should not only live a frugal lifestyle and consume less resources (brainpower , money ..) as possible on stuff which doesn’t produce any utility (entertainment , sport , fashion ) but also convince other people to stop their vanity fueled lunacy , for their own sake ( see Super Bowl example) and for society in it’s entirety.
Also CEOs are more often than not irrational people , 90% of the times their goal is to forcefully push down people’s throats a service or a product they don’t need (so they are basically doing the opposite of convincing people to avoid wasting money and brainpower on stuff they don’t need) in order to become rich and/or famous and buy stuff they don’t need themselves....
10% of the CEOs want to forcefully push down people’s throats products and services they need , so they’d be able to live frugally and use that money for financing research and all the other important things ; unfortunately money =/= brainpower and they’d be never able to offset the damage they caused ; this is the case of the billionaire friend of this community Peter Thiel (almost , he doesn’t quite live frugally) , when he invested in FB he was already into transhumanism , life extension , and WBE , so he probably thought that helping propel an idea like FB would have enabled him to carry on his real interests , 10 years later the progresses made in such fields are insignificant compared with what they could have been if young minds throughout the globe hadn’t been poisoned by such tech fueled debauchery . A book on transhumanism by Ray Kurzweil or Nick Bostrom , no matter how interesting it is can’t compete with the hot flirty russian girl literally 3 clicks away , so the minds (especially the young ones) that rational people were slowly beginning to convince end up wandering away further than ever before , overwhelmed by new overstimulating shiny things which would leave them scrambling for help when they’d learn that they have only 6 months left to live and that new experimental treatment is very expansive and has low chances of saving their lives
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 .
I am unclear on why this is one of your goals. Is a large population:
A terminal goal?
An instrumental goal, because the more people that are working on life extension, FAI, or whatever, the sooner we will achieve it?
Not a goal at all, but you feel that human population is headed towards 15⁄20 billion, and you wish for all of those people to have their basic needs met?
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.
If #2, I am not confident that a huge population is really the best/fastest way to achieve those things. A large population can create problems of its own (overcrowding, competition for resources, etc.), and solving those problems could divert attention from whatever it is that you want society to achieve.
Also CEOs are more often than not irrational people , 90% of the times their goal is to forcefully push down people’s throats a service or a product they don’t need
IMO you are overstating the ability of a CEO to push products down anyone’s throat (as I am sure anyone who has ever tried to market an unpopular product could attest). Yes, corporations do engage in marketing, promotion, advertising, etc., but ultimately it is the consumer that makes the choice as to what products to buy. A company that is successful in selling a lot of products is, more often than not, a company that is successful in understanding what products consumers want and is successful in producing those products. By and large, people buy meat, luxury products, professionally produced entertainment, etc., because they really want those things rather than because a corporation forced those products upon them.
Also, I don’t know that I would call most CEOs irrational; perhaps they are acting rationally given their goals (which may differ from yours).
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 is really the best/fastest way to achieve those things. A large population can create problems of its own (overcrowding, competition for resources, etc.), and solving those problems could divert attention from whatever it is that you want society to achieve.
That’s the reason why we must optimize resources allocation in every possible way , cutting all the unnecessary (entertainment , jewelry , yacht , meat , sports , fashion) and redirect our effort toward the important stuff
By and large, people buy meat, luxury products, professionally produced entertainment, etc.
Because they don’t know what kind of society they are giving up by pursuing those things and not optimizing resources instead , but CEOs are supposed to be smart people , they should know better , instead of enlightening people they sell them the crap they want in order to elevate themselves and be in a position which would enable them to buy all the crap they want . Few of them want to convert money earned by selling crap into progress towards that kind of society , but money are only useful when somebody on the other side accepts it to buy food and other stuff , too bad they are too busy buying crap to care about WBE
Also, I don’t know that I would call most CEOs irrational; perhaps they are acting rationally given their goals (which may differ from yours).
If their goal is becoming the 0,000001% in a suboptimal society instead of being an average citizen in a optimized society , then yes , they are irrational , statistics proved this time and time again , what kills the billionaire is the exact same pathology that kills the plumber....the billionaire might have a 28-32 months advantage in accessing a new experimental treatment , but that doesn’t cost billions of dollars , 5-10 millions will suffice
If their goal is becoming the 0,000001% in a suboptimal society instead of being an average citizen in a optimized society , then yes , they are irrational , statistics proved this time and time again , what kills the billionaire is the exact same pathology that kills the plumber
I don’t think that you can use statistics to prove that a goal is irrational in this way. You appear to be working from an unstated assumption that everyone’s terminal goals are identical to yours—a high weighting on long lifespan and a negligible weighting on everything else. In fact, this is not the case; people’s terminal goals vary.
The thing is, no one needs to align his/her goals to those of the majority. As long as he/she does not intrude upon the rights of others, each person can pursue his/her own goals. The great thing about “voting with your wallet” (as you put it), is that it is not a winner-take-all vote. You can use your resources towards your vision of maximal life expectancy, someone who values biodiversity, panda habitats, etc., can work on or contribute towards conservation efforts, and the live-for-the-moment hedonist can spend his/her money on luxury goods, etc. In fact, most people are not exclusively in any one of those camps but rather have a complex mix of goals; that is why a one-size-fits-all set of spending and career priorities is unreasonable.
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
Your right to pursue your goal of maximal life expectancy does not imply that anyone else has an obligation to dedicate his/her career or assets towards your goal. However, the arrangement is reciprocal; no one can compel you to abandon your goals and dedicate your career and assets towards his/her goals either.
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
Fortunately we have laws to mediate conflicts in individuals’ goals and desires. The law in most jurisdictions sees a difference between causing the death of another person by driving in an unsafe and illegal manner, and failing to dedicate one’s career and assets towards the goal of maximal life expectancy. IMO, the law gets this distinction right.
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.
Because once a person’s basic needs are satisfied the rational thing to do is to make sure that such needs will be met in the near and remote future
Beans and ammo! X-)
Does this mean that you explicitly reject Maslow’s Pyramid? Humans should never want anything other than their basic needs and if these are currently satisfied, humans should continue working at reducing the uncertainty of these needs being met in the future?
stuff which doesn’t produce any utility (entertainment , sport , fashion )
You have an unusual definition of utility. What is it? How do you define utility?
they clearly have mental problems
*snort*
A book on transhumanism by Ray Kurzweil or Nick Bostrom , no matter how interesting it is can’t compete with the hot flirty russian girl literally 3 clicks away
Are you, um, speaking from personal experience? :-D Because clearly people read these books. Maybe there are.. gaps? between chasing hot Russian chicks? (and studs, I presume)
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 explicitly reject Maslow’s Pyramid? Humans should never want anything other than their basic needs and if these are currently satisfied, humans should continue working at reducing the uncertainty of these needs being met in the future?
I would not say I reject it , for me the cutoff should be at the friends level , or even better allies , likeminded people to share thoughts and trying to change society for the better with the ultimate goal to live longer
You have an unusual definition of utility. What is it? How do you define utility?
Everything below the Maslow pyramid cutoff I just described
Are you, um, speaking from personal experience? :-D Because clearly people read these books. Maybe there are.. gaps? between chasing hot Russian chicks? (and studs, I presume)
We’re talking about a really small percentage of the population
the cutoff should be at the friends level , or even better allies
Huh? Maslow’s Pyramid goes Physiology → Safety → Belonging → Esteem → Self-actualization. It has nothing to do with how wide your circle of concern is.
with the ultimate goal to live longer
Ah, there we go.
Do you think other people MUST have the same goal and if they don’t they are mistaken?
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
That was one of Eliezer’s worse arguments, for a number of reasons. First of all, it is literally false. If you are actually asking what would happen if that were to happen in reality, here’s the answer: each day there is a finite probability that you will say that you do not want to live another day. And there is no reason for that probability to go down infinitely, so in the limit you can be quite sure that you will one day say that you do not want to live another day.
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.
Third, time inconsistency. Even if you actually say you want to live another day each day, that does not prove that you want to live forever, anymore than if there is an alcoholic who says he wants a drink whenever he is offered, that means he wants to remain an alcoholic.
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
Well yes , because if ask you the question today you’ll answer me that you want to live one more day
You’re forgetting that there is a cost to everything.
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.
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
Yes, as your personal choice. But the interesting question is whether you consider people who make a different choice to be just wrong or mentally ill.
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 off innocent people’s poor decisions , I don’t know how is that different from a jeweler selling a ruby for 200k , plus people wasting resources mining , polishing , selling and collecting these useless rocks are a cost for society exactly like drug addicts
because those of us not drinking and not doing drugs somehow know better than them
Careful there. Societies’ opinions on what’s proper and what’s not… change. A few centuries ago if you weren’t a Christian in Europe, you were a person “with disturbs” who needs to be cured, by a bonfire if necessary (to save your immortal soul, of course).
Also would you consider moral somebody who sells a bunch of useless rocks like opals , rubies....for 200k?
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?
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
By the same token you could argue for a lot of things—from pointing out that publicly expressing doubt in Beloved Great Leader “has some undesirable costs for society” to just putting grannies onto ice floes.
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?
With age restrictions (because minors are limited in the consent they can give) but yes, I am in favour of decriminalisation of sex, drugs, and alcohol.
I feel this is a good place for a Hunter S. Thompson quote X-D
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.
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
I would have supposed that Bill Gates was on your “good CEO list” (if you have such a list) due to the amount of money he has contributed to vaccine development and generally to improving health, longevity and quality of life in developing nations.
Companies that focus simply on the balance sheet and customer reviews won’t develop the kind of products that Steve Job did. Steve did make strategic moves that could be justified with neither at the time.
I am sure you have an opinion, but is there any particular reason you think yours is special? You seem to be unusually confident of how other people should behave.
Because when CEOs stay relatively silent , away from the public eye , personality cults don’t emerge and only numbers do the talking (balance sheets , customer reviews , hours worked by employees , their salary...) so people would immediately question fishy and/or hypocrite behaviors , which is something desirable
I’m still not sure what are you optimising for. Are you concerned about the virtue of the CEOs? about maximising the economic growth of the company? about political oversight over companies?
Notably, the canonical example of a narcissistic PR-obsessed CEO is Steve Jobs. He… did rather well.
Society , average quality of life , average lifespan
He did , society on the other hand , polluted by toxic concepts like the ones promoted by him and Mark Zuckerberg....not so much...Steve Jobs transformed a phone from being a useful , practical tool into a luxurious status symbol people feel the need to upgrade every 6 months , people praise him for having done such thing, but I honestly fail to grasp how this is a desirable outcome , Zuckerberg did the exact same thing with personal blogs...people used to care about the content they put online in their personal blog...now it’s all about selfies wasting bandwidth , hosting space and electricity...on top of that you have companies paying to claim their rights to use such platform to forcefully push down people throats stuff they don’t even need...Puking....so much brainpower terribly allocated..companies like AAPL (mobile division), FB and Sony for that matter (even though there isn’t a cult of personality around the CEO , though there is a corporate cult) have done so much damage in terms of resources wasted (brainpower , capital , electricity , hosting space , raw materials) and people are lining up to elevate CEOs due to the huge cult of personality around them....Companies which don’t invest in PR and corporate cult instead get destroyed by the press and the general public even though they move the world (Saudi Aramco , Exxon , BP , Royal Dutch Shell , Sinopec) and are not trying to forcefully push products down people’s throats but instead providing stuff which is (as of today) objectively necessary like petroleum and gas products which (as of today) constitutes the foundation of the world’s economy on top of which narcissistic PR-obsessed CEOs can build their empire and pontificate on global warming from their oil powered private jets...If you think about it the damage is comparable ; big oil poisons the biosphere (but as of today we could not live without) while FB , AAPL (mobile division) and Sony poison the minds (other than creating damages because of wasted resources like energy , electricity , raw materials...)
I agree that selling stuff like ITER or IV Gen nuclear reactors or HVDC power lines to the general public or convincing people to donate/invest in companies working on such solutions might seem to far fetched , we won’t ever see people walking people wearing Siemens or Toshiba or ABB t-shirts either....but avoiding selling them shit would surely be a good a good leap forward
“Society”, I don’t know what that means. For the average quality of life and lifespan the propensity of CEOs to personal aggrandisement is basically irrelevant.
Nope. Jobs transformed a phone from a voice communications device to a personal computer that’s always with you. There are a lot of consequences to that, both good and bad, but the rise of smartphones is not about status symbols. Not to mention that I don’t know anyone who changes her phone every six months. And Facebook is about the power of the (social) network, not about personal blogs at all.
So you don’t like market allocation? You want central planning?
You sound like you’re generally unhappy with the world.
That is wrong , because CEOs who have a cult following use their status to shape the future of society , Musk is de facto using his influence to de facto burn out kids straight out of collage in order to reach the goal of colonizing Mars
What if we used that brainpower to understand what consciousness is in order to perhaps one day have Whole Brain Emulation instead ? At that point we could have an Earth with the average surface temperature of 150F and no biological life on it and we’d still be able to thrive if we had enough energy to support ourselves , plus it would make space travel far easier , this would (positively) impact our quality of life and lifespan quite substantially , much more than colonizing Mars , so you could argue that Musk with his actions is having a negative impact on society by using his influence to allocate brainpower in a suboptimal way
And gathering data so people could have products they don’t need forcefully pushed down their throats more efficiently....
With limited use central planning might be good....tell me for example what utility does the entertainment industry have for society , or the sports industry , or the music industry for that matter , that’s all wasted brainpower that could be employed in energy , healthcare , infrastructure (the important stuff) . Plus these people are elevated by society and paid millions for their (non)contribution to society...this encourages people to become non contributing member of society (actors , musicians , athletes) themselves....people like Kimkardshian , Tiger Woods , Katty Perry....what is their contribution to society? Zip , still they are sitting over 400M each...that would not happen with (limited) central planning
That’s a pretty crowded space, with the rock stars, baseball pitchers, K-pop singers, politicians, etc. etc. all milling in there. I still don’t think the CEOs’ influence is noticeable.
Boggle. Pretty much every person on Earth voluntarily gives money to the entertainment industry in exchange for entertainment. You think they all are wrong and should be prevented from doing that? No music for you? No games, no movies, no nothing?
I don’t know if I expected dour puritanism (defined as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”) to resurface here...
I just made you the Musk example on colonizing Mars vs Whole Brain Emulation
They are wrong because that brainpower (musicians , athletes , actors , TV authors and presenters) could be used for example (if redirected to healthcare) to extend their lives or find a cure for the pathology they don’t have yet but they will develop , they are wrong but they don’t know it yet , they’ll find out about how wrong they were when they’ll scramble to get the best experimental treatment but they would not have enough money to pay for it because they spent 15000 to go to the SuperBowl 2 years earlier
Yes, and I don’t know anyone—and haven’t even heard of anyone—who decided to dedicate his/her life to colonizing Mars because Musk is such an awesome guy.
But you will tell them that they are wrong right now! X-) How’s that working out for you?
Let’s take me. I listen to music, play games, watch movies. You’re saying that’s all WRONG. Instead I should be doing.. what? And why?
Many kids straight out of collage find themselves with long hours and low pay because they drank the Musk Kool Aid , plus it’s not only people dedicating their lives...in technology many things overlap so people could consider exploring a particular field because it could also have applications in space exploration...also you fail to take into account investors and donators which would flock at Musk but less so with projects like the one of Aubrey De Grey or WBE
Don’t we do the same with alcoholics , drug addicts , overweight people and suicides ?
Ok so :
1 ) Diminishing these people (actors , musicians , tv host..) influence over society : this can be done quite easily by not buying but pirating every source of entertainment that you consume...there are many warez and torrent tracker out there to satisfy even the most avid consumer
2 ) Don’t ever buy entertainment again , as companies go out of business they will lower their margins and offer way better deals , don’t fall for it
3) Every entertainment/sport business has now gone bankruptcy , no new continent is produced , but you’ll still be able to listen to classic songs , classic movies , classic games...
4) As the consumption of old content becomes not enjoyable anymore , switch to producing your own content for your own enjoyment and consumption (acing with your friends , composing , pick up an instrument and exercise to keep getting better at playing it , practicing sport to relive stress and stay fit , gym , physical exercise.......)
I don’t think that’s true for reasonable values of “many”. Do you have data?
So boycott/pirate until they all go out of business and then produce your own? But didn’t you say that entertainment was a waste of time to start with? Why would I produce my own if it’s a waste of time and brainpower, anyway?
There is also the little problem of specialized skills and coordination of efforts. I can’t make my own animated movies and even if I learn, the results would be bad and the process would be horribly inefficient. Same for most other modern entertainment.
However the really interesting question is why. Why should I strive to kill all professional entertainment production?
No , because you’d do that stuff in your time off , you would have “wasted” those hours (and brainpower) anyway , while as of today people are literally wasting all their lifetime brainpower by choosing a career in entertainment , sports , music , cinema....and instead of being shamed for such non contributive decision they are elevated by society (status , money , influence) , what a lunacy....
Yes , that can’t be done , but you’d still be able to act , play an instrument , dance , do comedy with your friends and so forth...seems a good deal to me
Because it would literally extend your life , like in the Super Bowl example I made earlier....all the wasted resources (brainpower , capital , energy , electricity , infrastructures , buildings....) used in the entertainment , sport and music industry could be redirected towards the important things (energy , healthcare , infrastructure , cyberinfrastructure , research , basic research....) , and on top of that we would be able to support more people overall and lifting more people from poverty given that people in such fields are not exactly living a frugal lifestyle and they would contribute to the economy (the important sectors obviously)
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”?
Would it? I don’t find it likely. First, because I am not sure I want people like Jessica Simpson working on life extension, and second, because of Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Also, in the utilitarian language, the entertainment industry creates hedons which are a subtype of utilons. It creates utility. You, personally, don’t seem to value these particular hedons but other people do. Why do you think that taking this utility away is worth the trade-off?
It cannot be done , people need sleep and time off otherwise they’d burn out
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 indirectly serve the goal of life extension by having equipment and information travel faster
hedons : A unit of pleasure used to theoretically weigh people’s happiness
A rational people would always maximize their happiness by maximizing their lifespan
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?
If people give money to the singer so that he sings more—how is it different from the people giving money to a widget-producing company so that the company makes more?
That seems to be not true. A trivial example: someone suffering from incurable cancer who faces several months of pain and loss of dignity before the inevitable death. Another example: imagine a choice between living, say, 60 years as a rich citizen of the first world and living 80 years as a subsistence farmer in the malarial swamps of Central Africa. Your choice?
Yes as long as he has a real job and sings and plays guitar to alleviate stress in his 2 hours free time per day, plus you and your friend can go but you must avoid paying him and elevating him in any way (status , influence), you should go with the mindset that this is something you do in order to unwind and be productive the next day but it doesn’t give any contribution to society..your free time should be planned in order to enable you to unwind with the least amount of resources wasted
No that is wrong , because you’d be rewarding an unproductive use of brainpower , now he’d be able to buy food and other necessary stuff with that money you gave him and he will soon find himself doubting if it could be convenient to diminish the hours of the day to dedicate to his real job and increase the hours to dedicate to singing and playing guitar , which is unproductive for society
FWIW I’ll take 80 years as a farmer over 60 years as a rich citizen and even though I live in the 1st world I limit my consumption to the very strict minimum , certainly I don’t need the opulent lifestyle of the rich people in entertainment and sports like dicaprio or tiger woods...plus yours is a bad example considering how the african subsistence farmer doesn’t surely envy the vast choice of entertainment that his american counterpart have , but energy , healthcare , infrastructure...
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.
And why do you consider being productive the next day to be the ultimate goal, anyway? Is being economically productive the end goal of all life?
Why isn’t producing widgets “an unproductive use of brainpower”? I bet there are a lot of material things which you consider to be a waste—yachts, jewelry, fancy clothes, etc. -- so why do you single out services, in particular entertainment?
No, because here we are talking about the trade-off between longer life and quality of life and that doesn’t have much do do specifically with entertainment. Your position is that longer life is worth any sacrifice in the quality of life, is that not so?
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
Yes we should ban all that stuff too , I mentioned the fashion industry , but I forgot the jewelry industry and the yacht industry , thanks for the remind.
Yes , but in this specific case is not “any sacrifice” I’m explaining you the kind of sacrifice beforehand and I should add that entertainment is at the very top of the MASLOW pyramid , also we’re not even talking about banning enterteinment , you’d be free to play guitar in your free time and entertain your friends if you feel to , you would just not find anybody willing to pay you or elevate your status in exchange for it....differently from real jobs
Let’s set up a template.
I want X. X helps me, um, be productive the next day. I can make X myself, but it will be low-quality and making it will be very inefficient. Therefore I want other people to give me X in exchange for money.
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.
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?
Let’s take the case that X = massage. Any problems start to appear?
Let’s take the case that X = video game. We are now in the territory of things you want banned, but what kind of line did we cross? Where is that line?
Maslow was a guy, it’s not an acronym. And, as far as I remember, at the top of Maslow pyramid is self-actualization which is definitely not entertainment.
You were talking about banning things. As an empirical observation, an overwhelming majority of people are willing to pay artists/entertainers/etc. money in exchange for being entertained.
Nothing to say here , we need that stuff
Nothing to say here , we need that stuff
Yes , because while you’d need another person , I just need a couple of shoes and I am ready to jog , hopefully beat my best time , shower , go to sleep , get a good night of sleep and be productive the next day—almost zero resources wasted in the process
No way a video game makes you more productive the following day than a massage 1hr of cardio or 2 hrs of guitar playing , so all the extra resources needed to design , develop , test , ship and run the video game would be pretty much wasted ….and even if that was true there would be no way to quantify your increased productivity and compare it against the resources wasted to see if the whole process is net positive.
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?
I have been following this thread with interest, but I think that I am missing a couple of key pieces of the puzzle as far as understanding your position:
Above, you argue against luxuries (yachts, fashion, jewelry) and professionally produced entertainment so that the human resources used in producing these things could be used towards infrastructure and life-extension. And here you say:
and
It seems to me that you are arguing in favor of giving up a lot (e.g. professionally produced entertainment, biodiversity, luxury goods, panda habitats and meat), apparently so as to optimize production towards some specific terminal value or values. So, my questions are:
What specific terminal value or values are you optimizing towards? And, what is the “our cause” that you refer to above?
Here you seem to suggest that these terminal values are not just your values but are the values of all rational people. If so, why do you believe this?
You have argued against the amount of influence that CEOs have in deciding what products should be produced, and here you seem to make the free-market argument that consumers voting with their wallets is a good way for society to decide what products should be produced. But, consumers frequently choose to buy luxury goods, professionally produced entertainment and meat, and at least sometimes appear to value biodiversity. How do you reconcile your pro consumer-choice pro free-market stance with the fact that consumers frequently choose to buy and value things that you think they ought not buy and value?
Following-on from question 3, here you said “Personally I would love the government to outright ban the entertainment industry , the sport industry , gambling , the fashion industry and a whole bunch of other sectors of the economy”. If consumers voting with their wallets really is a good way to decide what products and services should be produced, why would you love the government to ban those things? Shouldn’t the consumer be allowed to vote with his/her wallet? Or, on the other hand, if consumers voting with their wallets is not a good way for society to decide what products and services should be produced, what is? How should this decision be made if not by company executives and not by consumers?
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 diminish our population , in reality humans will be useful to keep around (the more the better ) up until the very second before a recursively improving artificial general intelligence is switched on , and at that point it won’t really matter how many humans lived on our planet because we did things correctly (correctly understand consciousness/flow of consciousness and assign the goal of protecting our consciousness/flow of consciousness to the AGI ) we’d be looking at living much longer than even the most optimist transhumanists think
Because once a person’s basic needs are satisfied the rational thing to do is to make sure that such needs will be met in the near and remote future , people in 1st world countries are sure of that in the near future , but the further we look into the future the less sure we are that at any given point all our basic needs would be satisfied , not to mention 3rd world country where people don’t know if they’d be alive 10 or 20 days in the future . People who spend resources (brainpower , money , attention...) on stuff like entertainment , fashion and luxury goods are taking for granted that in the future their basic needs would be satisfied , which is a false assumption
The “wallet vote” of those spending ( not investing or donating) more than 75k (excluding healthcare) per year should be ignored , they clearly have mental problems and their biggest daily concern is to outdo the Jonses or gain societal status by exhibiting an opulent lifestyle and should be treated the same way we treat alcholics and drug addicts… but like I said I am very well aware that change imposed from the top doesn’t ever work so rational people should not only live a frugal lifestyle and consume less resources (brainpower , money ..) as possible on stuff which doesn’t produce any utility (entertainment , sport , fashion ) but also convince other people to stop their vanity fueled lunacy , for their own sake ( see Super Bowl example) and for society in it’s entirety.
Also CEOs are more often than not irrational people , 90% of the times their goal is to forcefully push down people’s throats a service or a product they don’t need (so they are basically doing the opposite of convincing people to avoid wasting money and brainpower on stuff they don’t need) in order to become rich and/or famous and buy stuff they don’t need themselves....
10% of the CEOs want to forcefully push down people’s throats products and services they need , so they’d be able to live frugally and use that money for financing research and all the other important things ; unfortunately money =/= brainpower and they’d be never able to offset the damage they caused ; this is the case of the billionaire friend of this community Peter Thiel (almost , he doesn’t quite live frugally) , when he invested in FB he was already into transhumanism , life extension , and WBE , so he probably thought that helping propel an idea like FB would have enabled him to carry on his real interests , 10 years later the progresses made in such fields are insignificant compared with what they could have been if young minds throughout the globe hadn’t been poisoned by such tech fueled debauchery . A book on transhumanism by Ray Kurzweil or Nick Bostrom , no matter how interesting it is can’t compete with the hot flirty russian girl literally 3 clicks away , so the minds (especially the young ones) that rational people were slowly beginning to convince end up wandering away further than ever before , overwhelmed by new overstimulating shiny things which would leave them scrambling for help when they’d learn that they have only 6 months left to live and that new experimental treatment is very expansive and has low chances of saving their lives
I am unclear on why this is one of your goals. Is a large population:
A terminal goal?
An instrumental goal, because the more people that are working on life extension, FAI, or whatever, the sooner we will achieve it?
Not a goal at all, but you feel that human population is headed towards 15⁄20 billion, and you wish for all of those people to have their basic needs met?
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.
If #2, I am not confident that a huge population is really the best/fastest way to achieve those things. A large population can create problems of its own (overcrowding, competition for resources, etc.), and solving those problems could divert attention from whatever it is that you want society to achieve.
IMO you are overstating the ability of a CEO to push products down anyone’s throat (as I am sure anyone who has ever tried to market an unpopular product could attest). Yes, corporations do engage in marketing, promotion, advertising, etc., but ultimately it is the consumer that makes the choice as to what products to buy. A company that is successful in selling a lot of products is, more often than not, a company that is successful in understanding what products consumers want and is successful in producing those products. By and large, people buy meat, luxury products, professionally produced entertainment, etc., because they really want those things rather than because a corporation forced those products upon them.
Also, I don’t know that I would call most CEOs irrational; perhaps they are acting rationally given their goals (which may differ from yours).
Exactly
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
That’s the reason why we must optimize resources allocation in every possible way , cutting all the unnecessary (entertainment , jewelry , yacht , meat , sports , fashion) and redirect our effort toward the important stuff
Because they don’t know what kind of society they are giving up by pursuing those things and not optimizing resources instead , but CEOs are supposed to be smart people , they should know better , instead of enlightening people they sell them the crap they want in order to elevate themselves and be in a position which would enable them to buy all the crap they want . Few of them want to convert money earned by selling crap into progress towards that kind of society , but money are only useful when somebody on the other side accepts it to buy food and other stuff , too bad they are too busy buying crap to care about WBE
If their goal is becoming the 0,000001% in a suboptimal society instead of being an average citizen in a optimized society , then yes , they are irrational , statistics proved this time and time again , what kills the billionaire is the exact same pathology that kills the plumber....the billionaire might have a 28-32 months advantage in accessing a new experimental treatment , but that doesn’t cost billions of dollars , 5-10 millions will suffice
I don’t think that you can use statistics to prove that a goal is irrational in this way. You appear to be working from an unstated assumption that everyone’s terminal goals are identical to yours—a high weighting on long lifespan and a negligible weighting on everything else. In fact, this is not the case; people’s terminal goals vary.
Well , in that case the interests of the majority would prevail
The thing is, no one needs to align his/her goals to those of the majority. As long as he/she does not intrude upon the rights of others, each person can pursue his/her own goals. The great thing about “voting with your wallet” (as you put it), is that it is not a winner-take-all vote. You can use your resources towards your vision of maximal life expectancy, someone who values biodiversity, panda habitats, etc., can work on or contribute towards conservation efforts, and the live-for-the-moment hedonist can spend his/her money on luxury goods, etc. In fact, most people are not exclusively in any one of those camps but rather have a complex mix of goals; that is why a one-size-fits-all set of spending and career priorities is unreasonable.
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
Your right to pursue your goal of maximal life expectancy does not imply that anyone else has an obligation to dedicate his/her career or assets towards your goal. However, the arrangement is reciprocal; no one can compel you to abandon your goals and dedicate your career and assets towards his/her goals either.
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
Fortunately we have laws to mediate conflicts in individuals’ goals and desires. The law in most jurisdictions sees a difference between causing the death of another person by driving in an unsafe and illegal manner, and failing to dedicate one’s career and assets towards the goal of maximal life expectancy. IMO, the law gets this distinction right.
If this is what you meant by “Well , in that case the interests of the majority would prevail”, then yes, I agree with that.
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.
Beans and ammo! X-)
Does this mean that you explicitly reject Maslow’s Pyramid? Humans should never want anything other than their basic needs and if these are currently satisfied, humans should continue working at reducing the uncertainty of these needs being met in the future?
You have an unusual definition of utility. What is it? How do you define utility?
*snort*
Are you, um, speaking from personal experience? :-D Because clearly people read these books. Maybe there are.. gaps? between chasing hot Russian chicks? (and studs, I presume)
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
I would not say I reject it , for me the cutoff should be at the friends level , or even better allies , likeminded people to share thoughts and trying to change society for the better with the ultimate goal to live longer
Everything below the Maslow pyramid cutoff I just described
We’re talking about a really small percentage of the population
Huh? Maslow’s Pyramid goes Physiology → Safety → Belonging → Esteem → Self-actualization. It has nothing to do with how wide your circle of concern is.
Ah, there we go.
Do you think other people MUST have the same goal and if they don’t they are mistaken?
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
That was one of Eliezer’s worse arguments, for a number of reasons. First of all, it is literally false. If you are actually asking what would happen if that were to happen in reality, here’s the answer: each day there is a finite probability that you will say that you do not want to live another day. And there is no reason for that probability to go down infinitely, so in the limit you can be quite sure that you will one day say that you do not want to live another day.
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.
Third, time inconsistency. Even if you actually say you want to live another day each day, that does not prove that you want to live forever, anymore than if there is an alcoholic who says he wants a drink whenever he is offered, that means he wants to remain an alcoholic.
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
The ironic thing is that they probably know more about it than you do, and when you are their age you might think the same way they do.
You’re forgetting that there is a cost to everything.
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
Yes, as your personal choice. But the interesting question is whether you consider people who make a different choice to be just wrong or mentally ill.
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...
Yes, I do not.
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 off innocent people’s poor decisions , I don’t know how is that different from a jeweler selling a ruby for 200k , plus people wasting resources mining , polishing , selling and collecting these useless rocks are a cost for society exactly like drug addicts
Careful there. Societies’ opinions on what’s proper and what’s not… change. A few centuries ago if you weren’t a Christian in Europe, you were a person “with disturbs” who needs to be cured, by a bonfire if necessary (to save your immortal soul, of course).
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
By the same token you could argue for a lot of things—from pointing out that publicly expressing doubt in Beloved Great Leader “has some undesirable costs for society” to just putting grannies onto ice floes.
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?
With age restrictions (because minors are limited in the consent they can give) but yes, I am in favour of decriminalisation of sex, drugs, and alcohol.
I feel this is a good place for a Hunter S. Thompson quote X-D
I would have supposed that Bill Gates was on your “good CEO list” (if you have such a list) due to the amount of money he has contributed to vaccine development and generally to improving health, longevity and quality of life in developing nations.
Companies that focus simply on the balance sheet and customer reviews won’t develop the kind of products that Steve Job did. Steve did make strategic moves that could be justified with neither at the time.