Dyson opens up another interesting question with this. Is it better to survive forever with a finite subjective time T, or it is better to consume 2*T experience in a finite amount of calendar time?
I would guess that most people who want that simply haven’t considered the difference between “how much” and “how long”, and if convinced of the possibility of decoupling subjective and objective time would prefer longer-subjective to longer-objective when given the choice.
(Of course the experiences one may want to have will typically include interacting with other people, so “compressed” experience may be useful only if lots of other people are similarly compressing theirs.)
Well. If one (Omega or someone like him) asked me to choose between 1000 years compressed into the next hour or just 100 years uncompressed inside the real time from now on … I am not sure what to say to him.
Again, the existence of other people complicates this (as it does so many other things). If I’m offered this deal right now and choose to have 1000 years of subjective experience compressed into the next hour and then die, then e.g. I never get to see my daughter grow up, I leave my wife a widow and my child an orphan, I never see any of my friends again, etc. It would be nice to have a thousand years of experiences, but it’s far from clear that the benefits outweigh the costs.
This doesn’t seem to apply in the case of, e.g., a whole civilization choosing whether or not to go digital, and it would apply differently if this sort of decision were commonplace.
Isn’t 2*T obviously better? Maybe I’m missing something here...
We are on the same page here. But a lot of people want to survive as long as possible. Not as much as possible, but as long as possible.
I would guess that most people who want that simply haven’t considered the difference between “how much” and “how long”, and if convinced of the possibility of decoupling subjective and objective time would prefer longer-subjective to longer-objective when given the choice.
(Of course the experiences one may want to have will typically include interacting with other people, so “compressed” experience may be useful only if lots of other people are similarly compressing theirs.)
Well. If one (Omega or someone like him) asked me to choose between 1000 years compressed into the next hour or just 100 years uncompressed inside the real time from now on … I am not sure what to say to him.
Again, the existence of other people complicates this (as it does so many other things). If I’m offered this deal right now and choose to have 1000 years of subjective experience compressed into the next hour and then die, then e.g. I never get to see my daughter grow up, I leave my wife a widow and my child an orphan, I never see any of my friends again, etc. It would be nice to have a thousand years of experiences, but it’s far from clear that the benefits outweigh the costs.
This doesn’t seem to apply in the case of, e.g., a whole civilization choosing whether or not to go digital, and it would apply differently if this sort of decision were commonplace.