As fictional characters popular among humans, what attitude is present in them is evidence for what sort of attitude humans like to see or inhabit. As author of those characters, Yudkowsky should be aware of this mechanism. And empirically, people with accurate beliefs and positive attitudes outperform people with accurate beliefs and negative attitudes. It seems plausible Yudkowsky is aware of this as well.
“Death with dignity” reads as an unnecessarily negative attitude to accompany the near-certainty of doom. Heroism, maximum probability of catgirls, or even just raw log-odds-of-survival seem like they would be more motivating than dignity without sacrificing accuracy.
Like, just substitute all instances of ‘dignity’ in the OP with ‘heroism’ and naively I would expect this post to have a better impact(/be more dignified/be more heroic), except insofar it might give a less accurate impression of Yudkowsky’s mood. But few people have actually engaged with him on that front.
As fictional characters popular among humans, what attitude is present in them is evidence for what sort of attitude humans like to see or inhabit. As author of those characters, Yudkowsky should be aware of this mechanism. And empirically, people with accurate beliefs and positive attitudes outperform people with accurate beliefs and negative attitudes. It seems plausible Yudkowsky is aware of this as well.
“Death with dignity” reads as an unnecessarily negative attitude to accompany the near-certainty of doom. Heroism, maximum probability of catgirls, or even just raw log-odds-of-survival seem like they would be more motivating than dignity without sacrificing accuracy.
Like, just substitute all instances of ‘dignity’ in the OP with ‘heroism’ and naively I would expect this post to have a better impact(/be more dignified/be more heroic), except insofar it might give a less accurate impression of Yudkowsky’s mood. But few people have actually engaged with him on that front.