Hi Hal,
I don't follow you very well, and I tried to ask you two times a question
which does not seems to be of interrest to respond (or maybe my english is so
bad, that it doesn't mean anything ?). But I'll try once more.
What I understand from that is as if you could influence probabilty, as if
knowing something or acting in some way will change your "future" Hal by
having him "good moments"... But if at every choice, every results exists
(whatever the measures of each one).. Some Hal are always garanteed to have a
"bad' experience and some other garanteed to have a "good" experience,
whatever you knew before the choice, whatever the measure. So my question is
how could you think acting "good" change anything in this matter ? And also
what is "good" and what is not "good" and how you classify these ?
Thank you
Quentin Anciaux
Le Jeudi 02 Juin 2005 18:20, "Hal Finney" a écrit :
> To clarify, I did indeed mean the equivalent of this latter case,
> where by some means on even numbered days I had more measure, and
> on odd numbered days my measure was then reduced to a lower amount.
> This might be done as you say by running a computer in lockstep with my
> mind on even days and shutting it off on odd days, if you accept that
> doing so will increase the measure of the even days.
>
> My message is at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m6592.html .
>
> The argument is fundamentally that creating a bunch of good experiences is
> better than creating a bunch of bad ones. Shutting the computer down
> doesn't matter. That just means that the good experiences won't be
> remembered. But they were still real, they were still experienced.
>
> After all, many people believe our own lives are finite in extent and
> that after we die we will have no more memories of our lives. But they
> (mostly) don't conclude from that that it is irrelevant whether people
> suffer or experience pleasure. Even finite lives deserve to be as happy
> as possible. This is true whether they last for one day or 100 years.
>
> And worse, almost all of the moments of our lives are forgotten within
> days if not minutes. Most moments make essentially no impact on our
> memories. We can't remember what it felt like to brush our teeth on
> February 9. Yet, even knowing this, we still try to make our lives as
> pleasant and comfortable as we can. Even though we would have known
> (had we thought about it) as we were brushing our teeth that day, that we
> would not remember that moment, that it would soon be forgotten as surely
> as if we had never lived it, we would still try to make the experience
> as pleasant and non-painful as possible.
>
> All these examples are meant to show that we act as though we care about
> giving good experiences even though we know they will be forgotten and
> not have lasting impact. If we extend that principle more generally,
> I think it follows that we should try to have good experiences on days
> when we have high measure.
>
> Hal Finney
> (Note that there are two Hals on this list)
Received on Thu Jun 02 2005 - 13:30:14 PDT