Rapture/Pet Insurance

I have told one of my Mormon friends

The presence of Mormonism, both direct (in the form of Mormons talking about Mormonism) and indirect (in the form of non-Mormons mentioning Mormonism), is surprisingly (to me) high in this forum, in comparison to other religions. I'm wondering if there is an explanation for this. Maybe it's just by chance.

I ran into a guy handing out Rapture pamplets today. I hadn't actually met one in real life and felt I should somehow take advantage of the situation. I asked him some questions to see if he'd put his money where his mouth was (i.e. "have you donated your money to charity?"). His response was "oh well the world's ending so it doesn't matter what I do with my money so I'm not doing anything.

I left mildly disappointed. It occurred to me later I could have had said something along the lines of "hey, since you think handing out pamphlets is a good use of your time, and you don't expect to need your money, why not hire a bunch of homeless people to help hand them out? It'll give them some decent food for their last two days, and help get the word out."

Granted, I'm not sure that any of that would have been moral or useful. But something along those lines appeals to me for some reason.

I would want people to sell me things, even if they consider my beliefs so utterly silly as to be a delusion.

I would also want them to try and persuade me to give up any delusions they thought I held, but in the event that fails I would rather they not decide that I am not sane enough to deserve to buy from them.

I agree with you that this feels like exploitation. However, I've seen several references on this site, though not lately, to the desirability of betting play money or small amounts of real money on one's beliefs, as a way of "keeping oneself honest." I like this principle and engage in small bets with other people on occasion. Is your problem here with the amount of money changing hands, with the massive advantage to one party, or with the concept of betting on beliefs in general?

Your position is extremely anti-correct reasoning, and the opposite of what I expected from the data my robot collected on meeting you.

I want to exchange trivial amounts of USD for large amounts of paperclips from humans (to be moved to the safe zone), thereby paperclip-pumping them. Humans regard this as acceptable, and even encourage it of me, despite their non-appreciation of the merit of paperclips being an extreme delusion on their part.

Humans would feel that their rights were infringed if my USD-for-future-paperclips were voided by a superintelligence on the grounds that preferring USD to paperclips "is a delusion". Humans of type "rapture:believe" and "pet:care" should be afforded the same rights.

Incidentally, is anyone willing to give me 1e10 kg of small paperclips in ten years in exchange for 1000 USD now, or some other offer of similar or greater favorability to my values?

I would not want people to money-pump me from my delusions, even if it were profitable to them, and even if it were a very bad delusion.

If people have highly money-pumpable delusions that they can be money-pumped in a completely honest and open fashion then the individual is likely so irrational that the resources will be much better used when transferred to the one doing the pumping.

How is this different from any other kind of insurance?

Well, to start:

• they haven't invested the premiums in a long-term portfolio that will be drawn from to pay for future pet care,
• they haven't set up a trust that will insure the fund will be used to pay for pet care in the event the insurance founders are no longer alive,
• they have no actuarial derivation of the expected cost of underwriting this insurance (including the economic collapse risk Desertopa keeps bringing up), and
• they have no external accreditation or oversight of their ability to honor their obligations.

(Note: the cryonics orgnizations that people keep comparing this to get the opposite result on all these checks.)

Not that I mind the downvote, but it's a legitimate question.

For similar reasons, I disapprove of laws requiring owners to buy insurance to cover dog bites by their dog, if and only if it is of a certain breed (pit bull, Rottweiler, etc.).

If other breeds are comparatively harmless, their insurance should simply be less. Breed-neutral insurance laws would also be more responsive than legislatures to tracking signs of risk (such as having an unneutered dog) and newly popular fighting breeds, etc.

I agree, insurance for rare events ought to be cheap.

However, knowing people, I really suspect that it's the former.

In general, I do not think that when several different motivations impart desires to do several different things, and it happens to be physically impossible to fulfill all those desires because it is impossible to do all those things, it makes sense to talk about conflicting emotions. There is no conflict, as there would be if I were a perpetual motion machine or something violating the laws of physics. Each action I take is done under the influence of all of my emotions and motivations.

This is even more true when different impulses give desires that are fulfilled by the exact same action.

It does not fit with my view of human nature to say that a human, who has both the altruistic and petty motives available mentally and in close emotional proximity, does something only because of one desire and not the other.