Possible corollary: I can change my reality system by moving to another planet.
Snowyowl
Karma: 419
How about: Given the chance, would you rather die a natural death, or relive all your life experiences first?
(1) I’m not hurting other people, only myself
But after the fork, your copy will quickly become another person, won’t he? After all, he’s being tortured and you’re not, and he is probably very angry at you for making this decision. So I guess the question is: If I donate $1 to charity for every hour you get waterboarded, and make provisions to balance out the contributions you would have made as a free person, would you do it?
Well, I was at the time I wrote the comment. I wrote it specifically to get LW’s opinions on the matter. I am now pro-choice.
And doesn’t our society consider that children can’t make legally binding statements until they’re 16 or 18l?
Oh for crying out loud. Please tell me it’s fixed now.
I think it’s been blown rather out of proportion by political forces, so what you’re describing seems very likely.
Agreed.
I reject treating human life, or preservation of the human life, as a “terminal goal” that outweighs the “intermediate goal” of human freedom.
Hmm… not a viewpoint that I share, but one that I empathise with easily. I approve of freedom because it allows people to make the choices that make them happy, and because choice itself makes them happy. So freedom is valuable to me because it leads to happiness.
I can see where you’re coming from though. I suppose we can just accept that our utility functions are different but not contradictory, and move on.
And a fetus lacks the sentience which makes humans so important, so killing it, while still undesirable, is less so than the loss of freedom which is the alternative. Thanks! I’m convinced again.
I don’t think you meant to write “against”, I think you probably meant “for” or “in favor of”.
Typo, thanks for spotting it.
Also, I’m not entirely sure that Less Wrong wants to be used as a forum for politics.
I posted this on LessWrong instead of anywhere else because you can be trusted to remain unbiased to the best of your ability. I had completely forgotten that part of the wiki though; it’s been a while since I actively posted on LW. Thanks for the reminder.
I naturally take a stance against abortion. It’s easy to see why: a woman’s freedom is much more important than another human’s right to live
Fixed, thanks.
Blues, Greens and abortion
Good point. Since karma is gained by making constructive and insightful posts, any “exploit” that let one generate a lot of karma in a short time would either be quickly reversed or result in the “karma hoarder” becoming a very helpful member of the community. I think this post is more a warning that you may lose karma from making such polls, though since it’s possible to gain or lose hundreds of points by making a post to the main page this seems irrelevant.
Are you suggesting that AIs would get bored of exploring physical space, and just spend their time thinking to themselves? Or is your point that a hyper-accelerated civilisation would be more prone to fragmentation, making different thought patterns likely to emerge, maybe resulting in a war of some sort?
If I got bored of watching a bullet fly across the room, I’d probably just go to sleep for a few milliseconds. No need to waste processor cycles on consciousness when there are NP-complete problems that need solving.
and I think other mathematicians I’ve met are generally bad with numbers
Let me add another data point to your analysis: I’m a mathematician, and a visual thinker. I’m not particularly “good with numbers”, in the sense that if someone says “1000 km” I have to translate that to “the size of France” before I can continue the conversation. Similarly with other units. So I think this technique might work well for me.
I do know my times tables though.
Weiner has a blog? My life is even more complete.
No, then too.
IIRC, he uses this joke several times.
Not all of them. Which applies to Old Testament gods too, I guess: the Bible is pretty consistent with that “no killing” thing.