I know that Eliezer Yudowsky is creating a more optimal world when I see someone on the Internet use the words “mere billions of humans”.
JackAttack1024
Karma: 11
People argue that pain is necessary to provide contrast to happiness
You should read this: http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
It makes your point well. This is also touched on in HPMOR.
There are many examples of this scenario, both in fact and fiction; an untranslatable word so laden with connotation that it cannot effectively be replaced. Usually, these words represent some core value of their society of origin (reference: the Dwarves’ Super-Honor in Eragon). In a way, the fact that they cannot be translated helps convey their meaning, showing their importance and giving them a quality of both simpleness and complexity, as if your brain was meant to have a word for them, as if they were simply a basic part of the universe falling into place. It’s a beautiful thing, really.
Oh, you can believe he’s taken it into account. It’s probably secretly a major plot point or something. He’s Eliezer Yudowsky.
It could actually be the other way around—an exponential decay. You would be horrified by killing one person, but as the numbers grow, the killings get more impersonal and therefore easier. However, killing a billion people one at a time would still hurt as much as killing one person times a billion.
Actually, it’s probably more of a twisted, jumbled mess of a correlation that no one has the time, resources, or heart to untangle.
Actually, it’s probably more of a… hold on.
[EDIT: I had originally made a very detailed graph out of characters, but it didn’t format correctly when I posted, so...]
There! A skewed S-curve with a negative exponential progression!