a few genuinely life-threatening experiences [..] I think the final fun-theoretic balance came out positive
Death represents pretty significant disutility; if the experience was significantly life-threatening, you’re attributing some correspondingly significant utility to the experience of surviving. How confident are you?
Ah. I probably should have been clearer about that. Above I haven’t been talking about expected utilities (which are likely negative, although I’d need a clearer picture of the risks than I have to do the math); in the last paragraph of the grandparent I was discussing the sum of fun-theoretic effects applying to me in the local Everett branch, and previously I’d been talking about what I assumed to be the utilitarianism of Bakkot’s hypothetical (which seemed to make the most sense as an average-utilitarian framework with little or no attention given to future preferences).
My preferences do contain a large negative term for death (and I don’t free climb anymore, incidentally). I’m not that reckless.
Death represents pretty significant disutility; if the experience was significantly life-threatening, you’re attributing some correspondingly significant utility to the experience of surviving. How confident are you?
Ah. I probably should have been clearer about that. Above I haven’t been talking about expected utilities (which are likely negative, although I’d need a clearer picture of the risks than I have to do the math); in the last paragraph of the grandparent I was discussing the sum of fun-theoretic effects applying to me in the local Everett branch, and previously I’d been talking about what I assumed to be the utilitarianism of Bakkot’s hypothetical (which seemed to make the most sense as an average-utilitarian framework with little or no attention given to future preferences).
My preferences do contain a large negative term for death (and I don’t free climb anymore, incidentally). I’m not that reckless.