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What about laws in place to punish those who run over people and kill them because their goal is to get wherever they need to go as fast as possible ? We punish these people..also we punish those who drive recklessly because they harm society as a whole by pursuing their goal
the rights of others
What about the right not to be killed? I'd live up to 5-10 years more if society valued longevity as much as I do...society would be defacto responsible for my premature death
What utility would future humans find in reviving cryonically preserved humans ? Besides a cryonically preserved person can't fight to protect his/her own interest to have the cryonic facilities spared during economic crisis , wars , social unrests..... which would surely happen in the future , history has shown time and time again how those who don't or can't fight to protect their interests stand no chance of having their preference on the status of the world met (other agents would force their preference on the status of the world instead)
In other words, you know I'm right but don't want to admit it.
Absolutely , I would never contradict a person so in love with this guy that he'd be willing to die for him , have fun at the front while sane people stay at home
You're confusing Trump with Obama again.
No , you're the one confusing a guy who has great temperament , diplomacy skills and the ability to laugh at himself with a thin-skinned scammer con-artist whose only goal in life is to fuck the next man in the ass and get away with it (think of Trump University and all his other scams).....Who is more likely to start a war?
Ok dude whatever you say...you might want to head here you'll find many likeminded people..
I must say that it really warms my heart that there are people like you out there so that when this maniac brings us to some other useless war in the Middle East or South East Asia there would hopefully be plenty of suckers ready to enroll and go die for him so that mr.Trump would be able keep his immaculate record of never having to concede anything to the counterparty during a negotiation
Only white people would obscurantly try to say Trump is not a great candidate.
Oh god , we're talking about the star of a reality show who had to decide who between Bret Michaels and Cindy Lauper would have been a better CEO for a company that doesn't exist...
Also :
- He went bankrupt more time than one could possibly count
- Evades taxes ,
- Has a terrible reputation in the construction business because he doesn't pay people or unilaterally renegotiate terms
- Has 3550 something law suits filled against him
- Never donated a dollar to charity
- Thinks Global Warming is a hoax made up by the chinese
- Wants to build a 50 billion dollar wall which is a fucking joke just to channel that public money through his shady companies
- Believes he's above the law and sexual assault doesn't apply to him because he's a reality show celebrity
- He's as authoritarian as dictators like Putin and Qaddafi
- Advocated for war crimes
- Advocated for deportation
- Threatened to jail his opponent
- Threatened to kill journalists
- Threatened to block the internet
- Praised Putin for being a "strong leader"
- Lies consistently
- Advocated for violence against protesters
- Spent 5 million dollars to have his bathroom plated in gold
- Claimed that mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists
- Didn't rule out the use of nuclear weapons in Europe
- Made ridiculous promises of bringing back jobs which would not be brought back
- Is anti trade even though even a 5 year old understands how trade advantages everyone
- Wants to pull out the Paris agreement on climate change
- Advocated for a proliferation of nuclear weapons
- Advocated for an increased defense spending
- Advocated for an upgrade of Minutemen ICBM nuclear missiles
- Is a demagogue who appeals to the lowest common denominator
- Praised Qatar for it's infrastructure built using slave labor
- Used immigrant labor in each and every project he developed
- Succeeded in bankrupting a casino
- Completely destroyed a political party
- Scammed people for millions of dollars with stuff like the Trump University
- Wrote a children bool titled "Winners aren't Losers"
- He's anti gay marriage
- He was so in need of attention that he had to make up the lie of President Obama not being american
- Before he was even elected he already severed relations with Iran
- Didn't debate in any of the 10 debates he participated during the campaign , he just yelled at opponents and made fun of them
- He's possibly the human being with thinnest skin on the face of the Earth ( remember this guy will be in possess of nuclear codes)
- Used whistleblowers revelations to propel his campaign
- Is anti abortion
- Has been endorsed by various members of the KKK
- He claims to be a great businessmen but in fact he has been outperformed by the S&P
Well , in that case the interests of the majority would prevail
And where did this abundance of resources and inequality come from? Does the dirt north of the Mexican border have somehow magically generate wealth, whereas the dirt south of it tragically doesn't?
Having the most fertile soils in the entire world in the midwest , and having gargantous deposits of coal basically , also being such a large country and enjoying no customs duty or tariffs while the rest of the world had to deal with them and still deals with them today because of the political fragmentation on our planet
And yet for some reason people build fences around their homes all the time to stop buglers and it works reasonably well
You're underestimating the utility of getting over a fence to rob a house vs getting over a wall to illegally enter the US...people would renounce and would try to rob some other house with lower defenses in the first case , they'd wear their thinking hat and find a way to circumvent the barrier in the second (as they already do with tunnels , boats and by simply overstaying in the US
Large numbers of Muslim youths cause a rape epidemic in Europe: meh.
Rapists will get prosecuted , plus they are getting bred out at a fast rate , plus muslim youths would pretty soon understand that is much more convenient to get a job , earn some money and hire a hooker to satisfy their sexual needs , so the problem is getting resolved literally by the minute
To the extent that is a problem Trump is also likely to crack down on that. However, the number of people simply crossing is much larger then the people overstaying.
Sure , god emperor Trump would personally put a sensor on every tourist who enters the country so that once their visa is up he'd send the feds to get them...
Are you honestly attempting to argue that a wall across the Mexican border will have negligible effect on the number of illegal immigrants that will get in?
In what exactly? Oh you mean in the territory that our ancestors took with violence from Indian americans first and brits later on ? Where there's abundance of wealth and resources people would try to sneak in , that is the price to pay for ignoring the global inequality , plus even if you're able to offset it with a stupid thing like a 50 billion dollar wall ( which you won't given that any electrician and their brother has a 35 feet ladder and boats full of immigrants already depart from baja california) it would present itself in some other , arguably even more damaging form
and 2 libertarians so what is your problem , dude? They're all 4 equilibrate people regardless of where they stand politically , the same could not be said for a guy who spent 5 millions dollars for having his bathroom plated in gold and sexually assaults women given that you're so concerned about rapists
My ideal election would have been Paul vs Sanders vs Johnson vs Stein.....never supported Hillary
Which may explain why Europe is currently being flooded with Muslim youths who are creating no go zones in European cities and engaging in large amounts of rape and other crimes.
Immigration will have a net positive effect on the economy of these countries , criminals are criminals and just as always would be prosecuted , also rape is not as damaging as it was for a population because of birth control , morning after pill and abortion , rapists are getting bred out at a fast rate
You seem to be implying that's a bad thing.
Ehm...channeling public money through your companies to build a 40/50 billions monstrosity (which would have astronomical mantainence costs) and make a huge personal profit at taxpayer's expenses , all while immigrants just fly into the country and overstay their Visa and drug dealers smuggled drugs into the country with small planes as early as 1960s....this is a pretty bad thing
Make any conservative argument, in any context, and someone will be along to tell you that you are a nazi who wants to kill 600 million people.
You didn't make just any conservative argument , you clearly claimed that you don't care about other people (non american) welfare! It has been proved time and time again that throughout the history of our specie more humans alive and capable of contributing to the economy meant greater progress , improved quality of life , longer average lifespan...
Also this is not about politics , this can be discussed on LW , in fact we're discussing about x-risks , altruism , best paths for human prosperity and so forth
In Egypt and Tunisia , where there was a grassroots movement to end the dictatorship yes , it turned out extremely well...the problems emerged in Lybia , where people would have not toppled Qaddafi if not for the massive western support
The whole "most variations from the equilibria are disasters", only really works if you share my guy's mania about valuing the other team's welfare
You know , there was one other guy who wasn't preoccupied at all about the other team's welfare , that guy was John Von Neumann and were he able to have it his way he would have cold bloodedly killed 600 millions people between USSR and China in 1955 when US had B52s and thermonuclear bombs ironed out , while he could have used his intelligence and technical wisdom to deescalate tension with the ultimate goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons altogether . Irony of the ironies he died relatively young because of a cancer probably developed working on the bomb , exactly like his soviets counterparts...he'd have had more chances of surviving if american , soviet and chinese researchers would have been able to talk to each other and exchange informations on potential life saving treatments . Besides that I don't even mention the damage that wiping out 600 millions people would have done to the world's economy , the world would have been a very different place if Von Neumann succeeded in acting his personal version of the final solution
There is only one team and that's team humanity , the prostate cancer which kills a russian citizen is the same identical disease which would take your life if you're unlucky enough to develop one , so given that ever since we (almost) stopped killing each other over land we enjoyed a prosperity which has no precedent in the history of our specie and it is mostly correlated with the fact that there are more humans around to solve our common problems , so how about we keep it that way? Also how about we increase the number of humans around and we lift them from poverty so they'd be able to contribute to the economy and together find a solution to our common problems (energy crisis , diseases , aging , AI) ?
Also I agree with you that the "preserve every pulse" kind of thinking could lead to an impractical situation , but I also think that the correct approach for this issue is the "in medio stat virtus" approach being something like "If you create damages to society which are greater than your contribution to it for a continued period of e.g. 5 years" your life would not be worth preserving
the only danger to us is a nuclear war (meaning Russia)
Such danger only exists because Russian people are possibly even worse than americans at spotting con-artists and calling them out on their BS (europeans seems to be better than anyone else at doing this , maybe because they suffered so much in the past when they failed to do it) , so they praise and elevate Putin as a modern day czar because their life conditions sensibly improved with respect to the Yeltsin years , but they fail to see how much power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of their president who is able to casually steal 1 billion dollars from the State budget to build a private palace on the Black Sea . It is the support of Russian people which enables Putin to threaten the world with the apocalyptic scenario of a nuclear war , but as the Arab Spring proved such support is not destined to go on forever , dictators get only deposed when the people of that country collectively think that their lives would be better without him....if all the westerners who waste time every day watching Netflix or playing video games dedicated that time to talk with their Russian counterparts through the internet , provide them information which would not be otherwise available given the regime's propaganda and yes , even send them 0.5BTC whenever they can to show support and compassion a dictator like Putin would be deposed and hanged within 6 months , much to the relief of people living in adjacent countries (whose suffering you seem to ignore and perhaps more importantly role in the world's economy you seem to ignore) and the rest of the world
Given our invincible military
This honestly seems a phrase straight off a propaganda poster , are you even aware of the costs in terms of brainpower and capital which are wasted every year on the military? Think of what could be accomplished if such resources were redirected towards research and basic research ( AI , FAI , WBE , nuclear fusion , brain understanding , consciousness understanding..)
To spell it out: I don't share (and I don't think my side shares), Yudkowski's fetish for saving every life. When he talks about malaria nets as the most effective way to save lives, I am nodding, but I am nodding along to the idea of finding the most effective way to get what you want done, done. Not at the idea that I've got a duty to preserve every pulse.
So are you seriously claiming that you can't see the correlation between number of humans alive on the Earth and average quality of life and progress achieved by our specie?
Putin will thug around his neighbors
Yeah right , because Putin putting his hands on the mineral rich and fertile soils of Ukraine is a totally desirable outcome for the world's economy
Yes, electing Hillary Clinton would have been a better way to ensure world prosperity than electing Donald Trump would. That is not what we are trying to do. We want to ensure American prosperity
And that , my friend is the line of thinking which caused the outbreak of every war in the history of our specie , also electing a guy who spent 5 millions dollars to have his bathroom completely gold plated seems the best way to ensure american prosperity /s , also you continuously mention Putin , Trump is the presidential candidate who resembles him the most , except for maybe one thing that would sure impress the donald the first time he'll meet him , Putin speaks a fluent english with a marked BBC accent , you could almost say that between the 2 , the Russian from St. Petersburg has the better words
Trump will (probably not) build a wall between us and Mexico
Mark my words he will , and he will channel public money through his companies in order to build it , he'll try to pull it off in the 2 years before the midterm elections...that would be something very Putinesque of him (see the similarities between the two are recurrent )
So he went over to the dark side...let's hope that he'd be able to contrast that war mongering general
Trump's victory calls for serious reflections on how people see the government as the enabler of change in environmental policies :
No meaningful change is ever enforced from the top , we should start dedicating a bit of our time and money to convince those who see their financial future jeopardized by the policies on climate change (e.g. coal and oil&gas workers) and not just talk and discuss with people who already agree with us . If we fail to do this we'd have a situation where people would feel threatened , abandoned and full of resentments towards those who forced a change upon them at their expenses , these are the sentiments which enabled the surge of populism across the political scene in 2016 , these are the sentiments which enabled a buffoon like Trump to become the US president
Also if we succeed in doing this we should take our responsibilities as 1st world countries to do the heavy lifting in reducing CO2 emissions given how developing countries heavily rely on fossil fuels to power their already weak infrastructure
Finally in 2016 , where people can go Google what their favorite celebrity ate a year ago , so called environmental activists like Leonardo Di Caprio are counterproductive given that clearly they are not willing to give up their jet set resource burning lifestyle , when even a 100% vegan environmentalist like me is enraged by his hypocrisy , how can we even think of convincing those who put economic prosperity and more specifically their economic prosperity above anything else?
Are we now judging people in here basing our considerations on the size of their wallet and their success with the opposite sex?
If that's the case I should point out that Pablo Escobar at one point was worth 35 billions dollars , was more powerful than many countries PM and presidents and had sex with something like 2000 women ...also Putin is allegedly worth 200 billions and he too beds a different mistress every day , plus (differently from Trump) he has the power and authority to singlehandedly force a nuclear strike
Donald Trump is a total buffoon , he's not very bright and had a jumpstart in life , he'd been better off by buying bonds given that he's been outperformed by the S&P , many of his businesses have failed and he was somehow spared a bankruptcy which would have left him without a dollar to buy an hot dog , he excels in social skills and persuasion (but again even does a con man) ; but somehow these seems to be attributes which are disproportionately linked to success in the US compared with any other 1st world country , maybe americans lack the capabilities to recognize con men and call them out on their BS ? Remember how characters like Jordan Belfort and Bernie Madoff acted undisturbed for years before getting caught , plus they did it in NYC , not Oklahoma or Alabama
If you want to see a guy who wins consistently if your definition of winning is somehow related to societal status , money and reproductive success (which is absolutely a stupid and primitive way of defining it) here's your winner
EDIT : Mistyped the word buffoon , please forgive me I don't quite have the words , the best words
Isn't that a bit excessive reaction for a rationality forum?
But are they taken online or not? Some women , especially self proclaimed feminists who voted for Trump would never tell that in front of a microphone
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
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
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 .
Ah, there we go.
Do you think other people MUST have the same goal and if they don't they are mistaken?
Well yes , because if ask you the question today you'll answer me that you want to live one more day , if I ask you the same question tomorrow you'll still answer me that you want to live one more day....and so forth... then you must plan in advance in order to make it happen ; If you fail to plan ; you plan to fail
2 An instrumental goal, because the more people that are working on life extension, FAI, or whatever, the sooner we will achieve it
Exactly
If #1, it is unclear to me why you would think that a large population is so desirable that you are willing to give up biodiversity, meat, pandas, Netflix, etc., to achieve it.
To get there (WBE , life extension , the maintenance approach by Audrey de Grey , understanding of consciousness , AGI that would preserve our consciousness) faster than we would otherwise
If #2, I am not confident that a huge population is really the best/fastest way to achieve those things. A large population can create problems of its own (overcrowding, competition for resources, etc.), and solving those problems could divert attention from whatever it is that you want society to achieve.
That's the reason why we must optimize resources allocation in every possible way , cutting all the unnecessary (entertainment , jewelry , yacht , meat , sports , fashion) and redirect our effort toward the important stuff
By and large, people buy meat, luxury products, professionally produced entertainment, etc.
Because they don't know what kind of society they are giving up by pursuing those things and not optimizing resources instead , but CEOs are supposed to be smart people , they should know better , instead of enlightening people they sell them the crap they want in order to elevate themselves and be in a position which would enable them to buy all the crap they want . Few of them want to convert money earned by selling crap into progress towards that kind of society , but money are only useful when somebody on the other side accepts it to buy food and other stuff , too bad they are too busy buying crap to care about WBE
Also, I don't know that I would call most CEOs irrational; perhaps they are acting rationally given their goals (which may differ from yours).
If their goal is becoming the 0,000001% in a suboptimal society instead of being an average citizen in a optimized society , then yes , they are irrational , statistics proved this time and time again , what kills the billionaire is the exact same pathology that kills the plumber....the billionaire might have a 28-32 months advantage in accessing a new experimental treatment , but that doesn't cost billions of dollars , 5-10 millions will suffice
I don't think that there's a significant number of people who buy Tesla's but who don't feel financially secure enough to get children. What makes you think that's the case?
In fact people who want to have children vote with their wallet and buy a 2003 Mercedes C 240 selling at 4k or even better they use public transport to go to work and other activities ; people buying Teslas at 75k are 99% the same people who used to buy Mustangs and Corvettes at 75k , they have not a worry in the world financially..
People dying from illness is not morally equivalent to people not getting born. You don't get off with murder for offsetting it by getting two children.
I never mentioned morals , workforce is about productivity , we should move these people away from urban centers and enable them work from remote in their new home in the countryside instead of slowing down our growth because they would suffer consequences , so we avoid their death and propel our growth , win-win
Let's take the case that X = mattress. I don't think you have any objections to this trade, do you? I expect you to agree that mattress-makers are useful and should be paid for their work.
Nothing to say here , we need that stuff
Let's take the case that X = a working toilet. Again, plumbers are useful and it doesn't look to be a terribly fun job so if you want a working toilet, you probably want a professional plumber and he'd want to be paid. Still good?
Nothing to say here , we need that stuff
Let's take the case that X = massage. Any problems start to appear?
Yes , because while you'd need another person , I just need a couple of shoes and I am ready to jog , hopefully beat my best time , shower , go to sleep , get a good night of sleep and be productive the next day - almost zero resources wasted in the process
Let's take the case that X = video game. We are now in the territory of things you want banned, but what kind of line did we cross? Where is that line?
No way a video game makes you more productive the following day than a massage 1hr of cardio or 2 hrs of guitar playing , so all the extra resources needed to design , develop , test , ship and run the video game would be pretty much wasted ....and even if that was true there would be no way to quantify your increased productivity and compare it against the resources wasted to see if the whole process is net positive.
If you argue that people don't die due to the pollution produced by cars in cities than you are simply out of touch with empiric reality. There's a reason why we had the biggest fine to a corporation lately for overpopulation due to cars. It's a serious issue.
Couples not having kids because they are not financially secure too.....That's a human life lost too...how can you value more one or the other , you simply can't
Not when it comes to harming their neighbors. Pollution does harm people and kills people. You don't solve issues of the tragedy of the commons by
Preserving the health of their neighbors is de facto harming a human life which is not taken into the world because a couple doesn't feel secure enough...
It means also less deaths of asthmatics in the short term. Clean air in cities is a valuable public good.
The workforce of tomorrow is a valuable public good too...
Shouldn't you be overwhelmingly concerned with increasing fertility, then? Given the current trends, the human population is expected to stabilize (or maybe even peak) at a level below 10 billion people. Some first-world countries (e.g. Japan) already have a declining population.
I am , but at the same time overwhelming poverty signals that we must be more efficient in how we allocate resources too...having 15 billions humans living on Earth but only having 4 billions actively participating in problem solving is not the goal
Does this mean that you explicitly reject Maslow's Pyramid? Humans should never want anything other than their basic needs and if these are currently satisfied, humans should continue working at reducing the uncertainty of these needs being met in the future?
I would not say I reject it , for me the cutoff should be at the friends level , or even better allies , likeminded people to share thoughts and trying to change society for the better with the ultimate goal to live longer
You have an unusual definition of utility. What is it? How do you define utility?
Everything below the Maslow pyramid cutoff I just described
Are you, um, speaking from personal experience? :-D Because clearly people read these books. Maybe there are.. gaps? between chasing hot Russian chicks? (and studs, I presume)
We're talking about a really small percentage of the population
What specific terminal value or values are you optimizing towards? And, what is the "our cause" that you refer to above?
Human population growth , being able successfully support 15/20 billions humans on our planet , while making sure that each and everyone of them receives the daily dose of calories and proteins necessary to fully develop mentally and physically , get connected to infrastructure and cyberinfrastructure so that we would have more brainpower to solve our problems . People think that with automation and machine learning we should diminish our population , in reality humans will be useful to keep around (the more the better ) up until the very second before a recursively improving artificial general intelligence is switched on , and at that point it won't really matter how many humans lived on our planet because we did things correctly (correctly understand consciousness/flow of consciousness and assign the goal of protecting our consciousness/flow of consciousness to the AGI ) we'd be looking at living much longer than even the most optimist transhumanists think
Here you seem to suggest that these terminal values are not just your values but are the values of all rational people. If so, why do you believe this?
Because once a person's basic needs are satisfied the rational thing to do is to make sure that such needs will be met in the near and remote future , people in 1st world countries are sure of that in the near future , but the further we look into the future the less sure we are that at any given point all our basic needs would be satisfied , not to mention 3rd world country where people don't know if they'd be alive 10 or 20 days in the future . People who spend resources (brainpower , money , attention...) on stuff like entertainment , fashion and luxury goods are taking for granted that in the future their basic needs would be satisfied , which is a false assumption
You have argued against the amount of influence that CEOs have in deciding what products should be produced, and here you seem to make the free-market argument that consumers voting with their wallets is a good way for society to decide what products should be produced. But, consumers frequently choose to buy luxury goods, professionally produced entertainment and meat, and at least sometimes appear to value biodiversity. How do you reconcile your pro consumer-choice pro free-market stance with the fact that consumers frequently choose to buy and value things that you think they ought not buy and value?
The "wallet vote" of those spending ( not investing or donating) more than 75k (excluding healthcare) per year should be ignored , they clearly have mental problems and their biggest daily concern is to outdo the Jonses or gain societal status by exhibiting an opulent lifestyle and should be treated the same way we treat alcholics and drug addicts... but like I said I am very well aware that change imposed from the top doesn't ever work so rational people should not only live a frugal lifestyle and consume less resources (brainpower , money ..) as possible on stuff which doesn't produce any utility (entertainment , sport , fashion ) but also convince other people to stop their vanity fueled lunacy , for their own sake ( see Super Bowl example) and for society in it's entirety.
Also CEOs are more often than not irrational people , 90% of the times their goal is to forcefully push down people's throats a service or a product they don't need (so they are basically doing the opposite of convincing people to avoid wasting money and brainpower on stuff they don't need) in order to become rich and/or famous and buy stuff they don't need themselves....
10% of the CEOs want to forcefully push down people's throats products and services they need , so they'd be able to live frugally and use that money for financing research and all the other important things ; unfortunately money =/= brainpower and they'd be never able to offset the damage they caused ; this is the case of the billionaire friend of this community Peter Thiel (almost , he doesn't quite live frugally) , when he invested in FB he was already into transhumanism , life extension , and WBE , so he probably thought that helping propel an idea like FB would have enabled him to carry on his real interests , 10 years later the progresses made in such fields are insignificant compared with what they could have been if young minds throughout the globe hadn't been poisoned by such tech fueled debauchery . A book on transhumanism by Ray Kurzweil or Nick Bostrom , no matter how interesting it is can't compete with the hot flirty russian girl literally 3 clicks away , so the minds (especially the young ones) that rational people were slowly beginning to convince end up wandering away further than ever before , overwhelmed by new overstimulating shiny things which would leave them scrambling for help when they'd learn that they have only 6 months left to live and that new experimental treatment is very expansive and has low chances of saving their lives
You contradict yourself within a single sentence. If the performance is something that helps people "be productive the next day" then surely it contributes something to the society.
As it contributes playing guitar , acting and dancing yourself , arguably more , so I don't see why you should pay or elevate him given that he doesn't have a monopoly over activities which help people being productive the following day
Why isn't producing widgets "an unproductive use of brainpower"? I bet there are a lot of material things which you consider to be a waste -- yachts, jewelry, fancy clothes, etc. -- so why do you single out services, in particular entertainment?
Yes we should ban all that stuff too , I mentioned the fashion industry , but I forgot the jewelry industry and the yacht industry , thanks for the remind.
Your position is that longer life is worth any sacrifice in the quality of life, is that not so?
Yes , but in this specific case is not "any sacrifice" I'm explaining you the kind of sacrifice beforehand and I should add that entertainment is at the very top of the MASLOW pyramid , also we're not even talking about banning enterteinment , you'd be free to play guitar in your free time and entertain your friends if you feel to , you would just not find anybody willing to pay you or elevate your status in exchange for it....differently from real jobs
We are not talking about sleep and if you think people will burn out without time off, won't they burn out without any entertainment available? It was available throughout the entire human history. You try to draw a sharp boundary between amateur and professional entertainment, but I don't see that line. If I go to see my friend who sings and plays a guitar, is it fine? If ten of us go, is it fine? If a hundred, a thousand people gather, is it still fine?
Yes as long as he has a real job and sings and plays guitar to alleviate stress in his 2 hours free time per day, plus you and your friend can go but you must avoid paying him and elevating him in any way (status , influence), you should go with the mindset that this is something you do in order to unwind and be productive the next day but it doesn't give any contribution to society..your free time should be planned in order to enable you to unwind with the least amount of resources wasted
If people give money to the singer so that he sings more -- how is it different from the people giving money to a widget-producing company so that the company makes more?
No that is wrong , because you'd be rewarding an unproductive use of brainpower , now he'd be able to buy food and other necessary stuff with that money you gave him and he will soon find himself doubting if it could be convenient to diminish the hours of the day to dedicate to his real job and increase the hours to dedicate to singing and playing guitar , which is unproductive for society
That seems to be not true. A trivial example: someone suffering from incurable cancer who faces several months of pain and loss of dignity before the inevitable death. Another example: imagine a choice between living, say, 60 years as a rich citizen of the first world and living 80 years as a subsistence farmer in the malarial swamps of Central Africa. Your choice?
FWIW I'll take 80 years as a farmer over 60 years as a rich citizen and even though I live in the 1st world I limit my consumption to the very strict minimum , certainly I don't need the opulent lifestyle of the rich people in entertainment and sports like dicaprio or tiger woods...plus yours is a bad example considering how the african subsistence farmer doesn't surely envy the vast choice of entertainment that his american counterpart have , but energy , healthcare , infrastructure...
Why so? Surely the waste could be minimized. Since you're making wholesale adjustments to the society anyway, why not eliminate all this unproductive "time off"?
It cannot be done , people need sleep and time off otherwise they'd burn out
Would it? I don't find it likely
They'd not literally work on life extension , life extension is the ultimate layer of complexity , very few people in sports and entertainment could work on that , such people could be employed in infrastructure and cyberinfrastructure for example , both would serve indirectly serve the goal of life extension by having equipment and information travel faster
Also, in the utilitarian language, the entertainment industry creates hedons which are a subtype of utilons. It creates utility. You, personally, don't seem to value these particular hedons but other people do. Why do you think that taking this utility away is worth the trade-off?
hedons : A unit of pleasure used to theoretically weigh people's happiness
A rational people would always maximize their happiness by maximizing their lifespan