Prediction : Trump will channel public money through his companies in order build “public” infrastructures , I honestly can’t say if he’s gonna move forward and build the great wall of the americas though
ernestdezoe
Karma: −74
Ok so back to the question I asked you above...shouldn’t people like me get some sort of compensation for the months , possibly years lost because society interprets “optimal” and “important” in a different way?
Everything has a cost but sometimes the cost is worth paying. If you’re optimizing for total pleasure/consumption/etc. over your lifetime then if you’re 20 you expect to have 50-70 years ahead of you and you would plan to spend your existing and expected-in-the-future resources over this whole time.
And I perfectly agree with that , my only claim is that if society were to put more weight on longevity and less on QoL we’d reach an optimal balance by not having to renounce to anything important plus we’d not have any regrets later on
but I don’t see why it would matter whether I’m 20 at the time (presumably far away from death) or 80 (presumably close to death anyway)
Again , everything has a cost
You won’t have any money to pay for your treatment at 80 if you squandered it all partying (QoL) at 20 , people do that all the time , they give up QoL in the present in order to be able to afford medical treatments (lifetime extension) in the future...it’s called retirement planning
This would be true if you didn’t know what would your preference be in the future ; but you know that , you know that as you’d be getting closer and closer to death you’d be willing to sacrifice more QoL than you’re willing to sacrifice now , so why not making a sacrifice now and give to the future you more minutes and less regrets?
Ok , so does this mean that you’re in favor of a depenalization of both commerce and consumption of all drugs , alcohol and prostitution with no age restriction?
Nope, not true. Willing to sacrifice QoL for longer life in the old age does not mean you necessarily regret what you did when you’re young.
How so? The future you wants to live longer and he/she would have been able to do so if he/she renounced to some QoL in the past , the future you can’t live in good memories of past enjoyed QoL , he/she needs time.
Sure. What’s the problem with voluntary transactions? They are useless to you, but not to other people. Do you know what’s useless and what’s not better than everyone else?
A person who regularly buys opiates is making a voluntary transaction too , society acts to stop these transactions because they damage collectivity (costs for society being : healthcare , unemployment , crime , loss of productivity...) , by the same token you could argue that mining , polishing , transporting and selling a useless rock like a ruby has some undesirable costs for society
You do recognize that other people are different from you..?
Drug addicts and alcoholics are different from me too....but society paints them as people with disturbs who need to be cured , because those of us not drinking and not doing drugs somehow know better than them and know what is better for them (and for us given that we always calculate the cost of drugs on society , healthcare and economy)
Also would you consider moral somebody who sells a bunch of useless rocks like opals , rubies....for 200k? Society paints drug dealers as evil making money off innocent people’s poor decisions , I don’t know how is that different from a jeweler selling a ruby for 200k , plus people wasting resources mining , polishing , selling and collecting these useless rocks are a cost for society exactly like drug addicts
you’re willing to sacrifice pretty much all quality of life (QoL) if that gives you more longevity.
Yes , but in the specific case I should point out that for me is a no brainer because entertainment doesn’t add anything to my QoL
I’m arguing that quality of life is important and that at a certain point (which is different for different people) you would stop trading off QoL for longevity. And if you overshoot this point, you would be willing to live a shorter life, but with higher QoL.
Are you suggesting that I should live a shorter life just because society has a different QoL cutoff than mine ? Is that your solution , i should just suck it up and die sooner because of this? If that is your position , shouldn’t people like me get a compensation at least ?
is not true because if we’re talking about optimization, when you optimize consumption it should be the lifetime total consumption (probably weighted by your ability to enjoy it) -- not the height of a single short peak.
If you embarked for such vacation , you would not have any lifetime left once it ended , because you would have traded all your remaining lifetime for concentrated QoL .
1) So are you claiming that QoL and lifetime are equally important? And if that is your position why don’t you embark for such vacation given that if you think that lifetime and QoL are equally important it’s basically the same thing as living a long life ? Are you not doing it because such concentrated QoL would not be worth the trade with lifetime because of law of diminishing returns?
2) If lifetime is more important than QoL why not just optimize for lifetime?
3) If your formula is a balance between lifetime and QoL are you aware that as you get closer to death your balance would move more and more towards lifetime and at some point you’d find yourself willing to trade any quality of life left for even a minute more to live ? So in that sense the future you is mad at the present you for having put too much weight on QoL , in fact he/she finds himself/herself facing death sooner than it would otherwise happened because of the present you putting too much weight on QoL
in this case you’re just opimizing for longevity and consumption has nothing do with it
This is wrong , and I’m quoting you , a dozen post above you claimed that everything has a cost we’ve already discussed this :
1) if all people who worked in entertainment moved to do something useful , we’d consume less and live a longer , but (you argued) less satisfying life
2) If a person didn’t blew 25k for a front seat at the Superbowl he’d now have money for that experimental treatment that would prolong his/her life
3) If you’re convinced of what you’re saying , why are you discussing with me on a forum on rationality instead of having your personal consumption peak , book an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora , get there in a private jet , spend 3 week in total debauchery while binge drinking , sniffing and injecting substances?? You won’t have money left for food afterwards but given that consumption has nothing to do with lifespan you’d be fine
optimize to keep his consumption rate above zero for the longest time
Sounds about as plausible to me.
It is , but a rational person would still optimize to keep his consumption rate above zero for the longest time instead of having one big peak and then a tragic collapse and crash on the x-axis
Is this what you empirically observe humans do? Doesn’t look like that to me.
People who are low in the social scale (your example of being a slave) want to elevate themselves so they’ll have more freedom of action
Also people avoid doing stuff that could endanger them because they want to avoid their future freedom of action to drop to zero (death)
is not obvious
Well , without venturing into a deep level of understanding of the urban sewer...you’d have to work to the outdoor latrine , that would waste calories and time you’d have not otherwise wasted
Why is it worth so much?
It might not be worth so much now , but it would be worth a lot in the future , that’s the whole point … While all your friends and acknowledges die , you’d still have 5-10 years to live
Plus it’s not like we have some other choice , this is what we do as humans , we optimze processes and act to maximize future freedom of action , death is the equivalent of zero freedom of action and we want our freedom of action not to drop to zero
So are you claiming that you DON’T consider a person who spends 200k in jewelry to be mentally ill ? 200k for a bunch of rocks...
Second, and more empirically, many people in their 80s say they are basically waiting to die, and not because their lives are awful, but because they think they lived long enough. And perhaps they will still say they want one more day, but perhaps not, especially for the above reason.
They are simply , wrong , or if you prefer they have a limited vision , they think that they have experienced everything that there is to life , but if they lived longer new cool stuff to experience would emerge and so forth
This goes back to my question about 60 years as a rich first-worlder or 80 years as a tropical subsistence farmer. Or, if you want, it goes back to at least the Achilles’ choice in Iliad.
I’ll take 80 years as a subsistence farmer over 60 years as Bill “fired my co-founder and childhood friend while he was dying of cancer” Gates any time , because he’ll run out of options and will have his freedom of action reduced to a big fat zero 20 years earlier than the farmer
That’s an empirical claim. Do you have evidence?
The burden of the proof is on you because your activity wastes way more resources than mine , and such particular activity also wastes way more resources than your other activity you mentioned before (guitar playing)
Why not? And if you can’t, why would you allow a plumber or a massage, but not a video game? Can you quantify increased productivity from a working toilet?
Oh c’mon now....Both your Xbox and your toilet both stop working , which one are you more relived once it has been repaired? Right ….there is always a hierarchy of priorities .
Also are there any online polls/exit polls regarding women? I suspect that in the privacy of the booth the high status alpha male personality of Donald Trump might have had some not accounted for effect , online polls could still have people lying about their vote and age/gender/race , but eliminate the shy voter variable which I suspect was pretty big with a character like DJT