Another one of those button questions.

[Lukie]

But then what really matters isn't your current life evaluation, but the overall picture. The Greeks were onto something with their famous idea: "count no man fortunate until he's dead."

What would you do if God came down from heaven and said that you have two options: 1) you will live 99 lives happily and 1 life where you break your neck at age 25 and are paralyzed the neck down for the next fifty years, or 2) you can live no lives whatsoever? Logic dictates that you should choose to live no lives because the amount of suffering you will endure 1% of the time will be so great that when you endure it you will wish you had never been born. This is fundamentally no different than why people kill themselves. Most of their lives were actually happy, but things became bad enough that their perspective changed and no amount of happiness in a "previous life" had any effect on the depression that came later

right now I'm inclined to say that I would take the 99 good lives:1 bad life chance

That's why this is really just a psychological exercise, not a logical one. If we were purely logical, not only would we kill ourselves, but we would take out as many others as we possibly could as well. Probability determines that as long as lives are being lived, a certain amount of unfathomable and unjustifiable suffering will exist. This is such a depressing thought to have, and it gets worse when you consider that creating offspring means that your progeny will play in the same dice game and eventually there will be a Ted Bundy in your family line, a paraplegic, a child molester, a molested child, and a Bradley Manning who will sit in a 6 by 8 cell for the rest of his life, enduring the greatest torture there is

bold I disagree with and I can't see how that is logical at all?

The rest is true and somewhat depressing, but I have already considered it and you can even go the other way. e.g. one of your kids becomes a scientist and figures out how to cure cancer, or develops nanotech to help reverse reverse the trends of global warming

[wufwugy]

right now I'm inclined to say that I would take the 99 good lives:1 bad life chance

Most people would but then regret it when the time comes to live that one life. Pain is pain and it knows nothing other than pain. When we're happy we say life is good, when we're sad we say life is bad; the difference is that the only time anybody says the bad is worth it for the good is when they've forgotten what the bad is like. Bad things are also substantially more powerful than good things. For example, there is no counterpart to post-traumatic stress disorder. If enough bad things happen to you, your life becomes one of unfathomable suffering, but if enough good things happen to you, you feel kinda just normal.

bold I disagree with and I can't see how that is logical at all?

It is logical because the absence of suffering is good while the absence of pleasure isn't bad. In death, there is nothing, but in life, there is suffering whose victims cannot fathom a justification for their suffering and want nothing more than to be freed of their suffering.

The rest is true and somewhat depressing, but I have already considered it and you can even go the other way. e.g. one of your kids becomes a scientist and figures out how to cure cancer, or develops nanotech to help reverse reverse the trends of global warming

That's in addition to those who go the other way. Even then, if we were being expansively logical we would fear technological developments because it is those that make suffering easier to create and more pervasive and perpetual. What happens when a conscious sadistic AI immortal is created and it creates immortal victims?

There is more suffering in the world today because of greater technology, and it will only get worse, all the way to a point where suffering is effectively infinite. Eventually we will be able to create immortal, conscious machines that can and will be put into perpetual suffering and completely forgotten about. The limitations of the suffering in this world are merely due to primitive tech. A dynamic consciousness by definition creates suffering and with enough tech that suffering is endless

[Lukie]

Most people would but then regret it when the time comes to live that one life. Pain is pain and it knows nothing other than pain. When we're happy we say life is good, when we're sad we say life is bad; the difference is that the only time anybody says the bad is worth it for the good is when they've forgotten what the bad is like. Bad things are also substantially more powerful than good things. For example, there is no counterpart to post-traumatic stress disorder. If enough bad things happen to you, your life becomes one of unfathomable suffering, but if enough good things happen to you, you feel kinda just normal.

well of course you're going to regret it when the '1%' life comes... but does that outweigh the pleasure from the 99 lives? It is a pretty compelling question, and I wouldn't blame someone at all for disagreeing but right now I'm still rolling the dice (maybe I'm a little more risk-tolerant than I had previously believed?)

It is logical because the absence of suffering is good while the absence of pleasure isn't bad. In death, there is nothing, but in life, there is suffering whose victims cannot fathom a justification for their suffering and want nothing more than to be freed of their suffering.

bold- philosophically I just can't agree with this. just seems like a double standard honestly. how exactly you weight everything is up for debate but if you say that an absence of suffering is good (I agree), an absence of pleasure is inherently bad.

That's in addition to those who go the other way. Even then, if we were being expansively logical we would fear technological developments because it is those that make suffering easier to create and more pervasive and perpetual. What happens when a conscious sadistic AI immortal is created and it creates immortal victims?

There is more suffering in the world today because of greater technology, and it will only get worse, all the way to a point where suffering is effectively infinite. Eventually we will be able to create immortal, conscious machines that can and will be put into perpetual suffering and completely forgotten about. The limitations of the suffering in this world are merely due to primitive tech. A dynamic consciousness by definition creates suffering and with enough tech that suffering is endless

I have read futurists like Kurzweil etc. although there is still some doubt in my mind whether or not we will be able to create true conscious AI, but for the sake of discussion, let's assume that it will happen.

what you point is beyond horrifying, no doubt, but it also leads into the ability to create a perpetual orgasmic bliss, a sort of man made heaven/hell type thing. better make sure you have your anti-malware software up to date

[wufwugy]

bold- philosophically I just can't agree with this. just seems like a double standard honestly. how exactly you weight everything is up for debate but if you say that an absence of suffering is good (I agree), an absence of pleasure is inherently bad.

We don't describe things as purely either pleasurable or painful; there is a whole lot of "in between" stuff that is neither and we describe that stuff as "good." We describe things like not having a headache as good but not as pleasurable

I have read futurists like Kurzweil etc. although there is still some doubt in my mind whether or not we will be able to create true conscious AI

As long as the species exists to create the tech, it will happen. Consciousness is just a chemical interaction. As soon as we can create a 3d computer chip with trillions of connectors and pathways, we'll find we've created a conscious being. Consciousness isn't really even about having a brain, but about having a really big brain with so many synapses that it creates abstractions and confuses them with reality.

what you point is beyond horrifying, no doubt, but it also leads into the ability to create a perpetual orgasmic bliss, a sort of man made heaven/hell type thing. better make sure you have your anti-malware software up to date

I know we've discussed this before, but I think that suffering is unjustifiable. One person's suffering is no more or less no matter what happens outside of that person's experience. Logically, this means there isn't any moral difference between one person suffering and a trillion. If one person died in the Holocaust, his suffering would have been the exact same as it would be when six million others also died along with him

[a500lbgorilla]

Bad things are also substantially more powerful than good things.

I wonder.

[wufwugy]

I wonder.

It is a point of contention I could be wrong on. But so much of what we do that brings us joy is really just because we feel bad when we don't do them. It's like how they say heroin doesn't really feel that wonderful until you realize what it's like to not be high. People kill themselves because of pain; the equivalent on the pleasure side doesn't seem to exist