I think we should steelman this by stipulating that if you don’t take the trade, neither you nor Frank will die any time soon. You will both live out a normal human lifespan, just a very dull one.
It gets even more interesting if Frank is an immortal in this scenario, and the only way to get the machine is to make him mortal, perhaps with some small probability epsilon. How small does epsilon have to be before you (or Frank) will agree to such a trade?
This is basically what I intended with the White Room: make things as simple as possible.
Ironically, this may require a statement that you and Frank will return to the real world after this trade… (except I can’t do that because then the obvious solution is “take the nanofab, go make Hourai Elixirs for everyone, ω^2 utility beats ω.” Argh.)
I think we should steelman this by stipulating that if you don’t take the trade, neither you nor Frank will die any time soon. You will both live out a normal human lifespan, just a very dull one.
It gets even more interesting if Frank is an immortal in this scenario, and the only way to get the machine is to make him mortal, perhaps with some small probability epsilon. How small does epsilon have to be before you (or Frank) will agree to such a trade?
This is basically what I intended with the White Room: make things as simple as possible.
Ironically, this may require a statement that you and Frank will return to the real world after this trade… (except I can’t do that because then the obvious solution is “take the nanofab, go make Hourai Elixirs for everyone, ω^2 utility beats ω.” Argh.)