Your probability estimates about how many years of health you’ll have have changed considerably, so you wouldn’t expect to continue with the exact same behavior.
For instance, if you’ve been working on something that would take you several more years of good health to accomplish, you might want to spend a month finding someone to carry it on for you who’s similarly motivated and making it easier for them to carry it on.
Or you might decide that you don’t care about that long-term goal enough to justify the time and effort it would take away from other things that are more important for you to do in your life, but that you would have spread out over a longer timespan if you were going to live longer and accomplish a number of less-important goals or ones that are only achievable if you have more time to work on them.
You might also realize that the things you want are considerably different than the ones you thought you wanted. Maybe that was previously “playing the game wrong”, but I can’t see how a human could rule out the possibility of themself having a change in outlook/values/expectations after getting such news, which may have an impact on basic motivations as well as shifting attention from old lines of thinking, which they may have tried to make very rational, to ones that they may have been neglecting—and I seriously doubt anyone lacks these. Shifts in where they reason and rationalize.
One question that arises is a fundamental issue of motivation. Is it rational, for example, to have a list of “things to do before I die”? Especially if you believe that it is likely that you will not remember whether you did them or not, after you die? If you find out you’re going to die in a couple of years, does it make sense to try to cram as many items from your list as possible in that limited time? What would be the point? Indeed, what is the point of any action?
Ultimately, what is the source of our motivation, if we know that after we die we won’t remember what happened? It’s one thing when death is off in a nebulous future, but when it is relatively soon and immediate, there is going to be little or no time to enjoy an accomplishment.
It seems reminiscent of the difference between the iterated and one-shot prisoner’s dilemma. A long and somewhat indefinite life span is like the iterated PD, in that we expect to experience a wide range of effects and impacts from our actions. A short and more definite life span is like the one-shot PD, with only limited and short-term effects. Perhaps another way to think of it is that our normal actions affect our future selves, while with terminal illness, there are no future selves to worry about.
Is it rational, for example, to have a list of “things to do before I die”? Especially if you believe that it is likely that you will not remember whether you did them or not, after you die?
It is rational to have a list of things to do before you die if you have preferences over configurations of external reality outside the small part of external reality that causes your internal experiences.
Right, that makes sense, but most things I’ve seen on such lists are more focused on personal experiences that would be enjoyable and/or challenging. The first Google hit I got was http://brass612.tripod.com/cgi-bin/things.html and it has the typical things: skydive, travel, eat rare foods, have adventures. Some of them are focused on other people or leaving the world a better (or at least different) place but most of them seem to be for the purpose of giving yourself happy memories.
Is doing this irrational? Or at least, would it be irrational to pursue such activities if you knew that you weren’t going to live long afterward?
Turning it around, suppose there were an adventure which would be unique and exciting, but also fatal? Consider skydiving without a parachute, perhaps into a scenic wilderness. Clearly you won’t remember the experience afterwards, you’ll have only those few minutes. Should the discovery of a shortened lifespan make this kind of adventure more attractive?
Haha, if you knew you were going to die without recovering enough health to do anything else of value, only perhaps drain you family’s bank accounts and emotions, along with hospital resources, hooked up to machines, that kind of adventure SHOULD be more attractive.
I think you’re underestimating the value of an experience as you live it. I would think that the value of a happy memory is only a small fraction of the value of a good experience, and a lot of the value of the memory is in directing you to seek out further good experiences and to believe in your own ability to engage in activities with good outcomes. But these positive benefits are only valuable because while you keep the happy memories in mind, you engage in further positive experiences.
Just because you don’t remember something doesn’t mean it disappears. It’s still there—just at a certain position in time. You seem to be thinking, “Well, I can’t remember this now, I can’t remember the happiness, therefore the happiness I experienced doesn’t exist.” But remember there won’t be any you to forget how good skydiving to your death felt in retrospect, and there WILL be a you at the time of diving to feel gloriously good—as opposed to the you who could feel miserably bad over a protracted deathbed.
But I would think the most important things to do would involve loved ones—either providing for them after they’re gone or bonding as much as you can with them while they’re around. Which may makes things more painful, but at least you’ll know you had an impact on the world, could convey your ideas and values—which most of us consider as an essential part of ourselves. Other priorities for extending your influence might include writing memoirs or giving and recording a talk. You might also have something you need to do—like go see something for yourself—so you can HAVE an idea or position to record and influence others with after your life.
And certainly things like saving for your retirement would become unimportant, so your overall priorities would shift.
[Edited the sentence that starts “But remember there won’t be any you...”]
If the sudden addition of an apparent deadline to your life changes the game completely, isn’t it likely you’ve been playing the game wrong?
You always knew about death.
Your probability estimates about how many years of health you’ll have have changed considerably, so you wouldn’t expect to continue with the exact same behavior.
For instance, if you’ve been working on something that would take you several more years of good health to accomplish, you might want to spend a month finding someone to carry it on for you who’s similarly motivated and making it easier for them to carry it on.
Or you might decide that you don’t care about that long-term goal enough to justify the time and effort it would take away from other things that are more important for you to do in your life, but that you would have spread out over a longer timespan if you were going to live longer and accomplish a number of less-important goals or ones that are only achievable if you have more time to work on them.
You might also realize that the things you want are considerably different than the ones you thought you wanted. Maybe that was previously “playing the game wrong”, but I can’t see how a human could rule out the possibility of themself having a change in outlook/values/expectations after getting such news, which may have an impact on basic motivations as well as shifting attention from old lines of thinking, which they may have tried to make very rational, to ones that they may have been neglecting—and I seriously doubt anyone lacks these. Shifts in where they reason and rationalize.
/shrugs
One question that arises is a fundamental issue of motivation. Is it rational, for example, to have a list of “things to do before I die”? Especially if you believe that it is likely that you will not remember whether you did them or not, after you die? If you find out you’re going to die in a couple of years, does it make sense to try to cram as many items from your list as possible in that limited time? What would be the point? Indeed, what is the point of any action?
Ultimately, what is the source of our motivation, if we know that after we die we won’t remember what happened? It’s one thing when death is off in a nebulous future, but when it is relatively soon and immediate, there is going to be little or no time to enjoy an accomplishment.
It seems reminiscent of the difference between the iterated and one-shot prisoner’s dilemma. A long and somewhat indefinite life span is like the iterated PD, in that we expect to experience a wide range of effects and impacts from our actions. A short and more definite life span is like the one-shot PD, with only limited and short-term effects. Perhaps another way to think of it is that our normal actions affect our future selves, while with terminal illness, there are no future selves to worry about.
It is rational to have a list of things to do before you die if you have preferences over configurations of external reality outside the small part of external reality that causes your internal experiences.
Right, that makes sense, but most things I’ve seen on such lists are more focused on personal experiences that would be enjoyable and/or challenging. The first Google hit I got was http://brass612.tripod.com/cgi-bin/things.html and it has the typical things: skydive, travel, eat rare foods, have adventures. Some of them are focused on other people or leaving the world a better (or at least different) place but most of them seem to be for the purpose of giving yourself happy memories.
Is doing this irrational? Or at least, would it be irrational to pursue such activities if you knew that you weren’t going to live long afterward?
Turning it around, suppose there were an adventure which would be unique and exciting, but also fatal? Consider skydiving without a parachute, perhaps into a scenic wilderness. Clearly you won’t remember the experience afterwards, you’ll have only those few minutes. Should the discovery of a shortened lifespan make this kind of adventure more attractive?
Haha, if you knew you were going to die without recovering enough health to do anything else of value, only perhaps drain you family’s bank accounts and emotions, along with hospital resources, hooked up to machines, that kind of adventure SHOULD be more attractive.
I think you’re underestimating the value of an experience as you live it. I would think that the value of a happy memory is only a small fraction of the value of a good experience, and a lot of the value of the memory is in directing you to seek out further good experiences and to believe in your own ability to engage in activities with good outcomes. But these positive benefits are only valuable because while you keep the happy memories in mind, you engage in further positive experiences.
Just because you don’t remember something doesn’t mean it disappears. It’s still there—just at a certain position in time. You seem to be thinking, “Well, I can’t remember this now, I can’t remember the happiness, therefore the happiness I experienced doesn’t exist.” But remember there won’t be any you to forget how good skydiving to your death felt in retrospect, and there WILL be a you at the time of diving to feel gloriously good—as opposed to the you who could feel miserably bad over a protracted deathbed.
But I would think the most important things to do would involve loved ones—either providing for them after they’re gone or bonding as much as you can with them while they’re around. Which may makes things more painful, but at least you’ll know you had an impact on the world, could convey your ideas and values—which most of us consider as an essential part of ourselves. Other priorities for extending your influence might include writing memoirs or giving and recording a talk. You might also have something you need to do—like go see something for yourself—so you can HAVE an idea or position to record and influence others with after your life.
And certainly things like saving for your retirement would become unimportant, so your overall priorities would shift.
[Edited the sentence that starts “But remember there won’t be any you...”]