’Cause in real life, if I didn’t use a computer, I would massively increase my chances of starving, having no other marketable skills.
In fact, in real life this almost never comes up, because the tiny chance of you outright dying is outweighed by practical concerns. Hence the white-room, so I can take out all the actual consequences and bring in a flat choice. (Though apparently, I didn’t close all the loopholes; admittedly, some of them are legitimate concerns about what a human life actually means.)
At any rate, while my personal opinion is apparently shifting towards “nevermind, lives have a real value after all” (my answers would be “yes to unanimous consent, no to unanimous consent, and yes it would be, which implies a rather large Oops!), there are still plenty of places where it makes sense to draw a tier. Unfortunately, surreals turned out to be a terrible choice for such things purely for mathematical reasons, so if I ever try this again it will be with flat-out program classes named Tiers.
Actually, before I completely throw up my hands, I should probably figure out what seems different between the one-on-one trade and the billion-to-one trade that changes my answers...
Oh, I see. It’s the tiering again, after all. The infinite Fun is itself a second-tier value; whether or not it’s on the same tier as a life is its own debate, but a billion things possibly-equal-to-a-life are more likely to outcompete a life than a single one.
… of course, if you replace “infinite Fun” with “3^^^^3 years of Fun,” the tiering argument vanishes but the problem might not. Argh, I’m going to have to rethink this.
’Cause in real life, if I didn’t use a computer, I would massively increase my chances of starving, having no other marketable skills.
In fact, in real life this almost never comes up, because the tiny chance of you outright dying is outweighed by practical concerns. Hence the white-room, so I can take out all the actual consequences and bring in a flat choice. (Though apparently, I didn’t close all the loopholes; admittedly, some of them are legitimate concerns about what a human life actually means.)
At any rate, while my personal opinion is apparently shifting towards “nevermind, lives have a real value after all” (my answers would be “yes to unanimous consent, no to unanimous consent, and yes it would be, which implies a rather large Oops!), there are still plenty of places where it makes sense to draw a tier. Unfortunately, surreals turned out to be a terrible choice for such things purely for mathematical reasons, so if I ever try this again it will be with flat-out program classes named Tiers.
Actually, before I completely throw up my hands, I should probably figure out what seems different between the one-on-one trade and the billion-to-one trade that changes my answers...
Oh, I see. It’s the tiering again, after all. The infinite Fun is itself a second-tier value; whether or not it’s on the same tier as a life is its own debate, but a billion things possibly-equal-to-a-life are more likely to outcompete a life than a single one.
… of course, if you replace “infinite Fun” with “3^^^^3 years of Fun,” the tiering argument vanishes but the problem might not. Argh, I’m going to have to rethink this.