What kind of girl do you think I am?
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What kind of girl do you think I am?
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Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#2A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them.
To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation curve.) A million dollars "changes the game" of your life. $100 doesn't.
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#3A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them. To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation…
So for a trillion dollars, you wouldn't kill someone, only restrict them to living inside a stationary computer for eternity without their consent.
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#4A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them. To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation…
Would that amount vary much if the person you were to kill was someone you cared about?
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#5A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them. To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation…
So for a trillion dollars, you wouldn't kill someone, only restrict them to living inside a stationary computer for eternity without their consent.
Given sufficient technology, what exactly is the difference?
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#6A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them. To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation…
It's never clear to me why people answer thought experiments like this in this manner. The point of the question "would you kill someone for a trillion dollars" is to tease out an answer to an underlying philosophical question, such as, "is the act of killing as we know it a moral absolute wrong, or is it merely an act with great negative utility that can be compensated by sufficient positive utility?"
Yes, there are always creative ways to avoid really answering the question (such as doing a brain upload, as suggested), but these answers do nothing to answer the underlying question, which is what the thought experiment is really trying to get at.
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#7A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them. To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation…
So for a trillion dollars, you wouldn't kill someone, only restrict them to living inside a stationary computer for eternity without their consent.
The important word in my analogy was "invent." Given that the technology exists, lots of other things would happen—an emulation could be plugged into arbitrary "sensory" inputs, so a simulated universe could be created for it; that simulated universe would seem like an inviting prospect for those that do not wish to continue a life that mostly consists of sitting around on the Internet anyway, so more people (first-adopters) would upload as well, even if their "real" bodies continued separately; the large number of ems would provoke discussions of em rights, which would lead to internationally-funded medical programs to create two-way bridges between our reality and the simulations... and so on.
That's what I mean by "discontinuity": you can't give a cost-benefit analysis to something like a trillion dollars, because one trillion-dollar investment can completely alter the course of civilization with its knock-on effects.
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
So for a trillion dollars, you wouldn't kill someone, only restrict them to living inside a stationary computer for eternity without their consent.
The important word in my analogy was "invent." Given that the technology exists, lots of other things would happen—an emulation could be plugged into arbitrary "sensory" inputs, so a simulated universe could be created for it; that simulated universe would seem like an inviting prospect for those that do not wish to continue a life that mostly consists of sitting around on the Internet anyway, so more people (first-a…
You're still seriously inconveniencing some guy, and doing something highly significant to him without his consent.
But it was mostly a quibble :) I agree with your central argument.
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#9A thought: if someone offered me a trillion dollars to kill a person, I would get trillion-dollar loan, invent brain-uploading and emulation technology with it, copy the person into the machine, and then kill them. To put that more simply: past a certain point, the idea of marginal value in a cost/benefit analysis breaks down, because the benefit "changes the game." (That is, creates a discontinuity in the valuation…
If you're going to invent scenarios, you should invent realistic one's. For example, I'm fairly confident that you couldn't solve the problem of brain duplication for a trillion dollars. The NIH budget in 2010 was ~32 billion which isn't close to a trillion, but it's a lot closer to a trillion than we are to duplicating a brain.
On a philosophical level though, a lot of people would probably disagree with your proposed actions. For me, personally, I wouldn't want to "influence" (vaguely kill, but also any of these "duplication" scenarios) someone else's mortality for any amount of money.
Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
So for a trillion dollars, you wouldn't kill someone, only restrict them to living inside a stationary computer for eternity without their consent.
Given sufficient technology, what exactly is the difference?
Well, you're making decisions about someone else's mortality. Maybe they wouldn't want to live forever with everyone else that they knew dying? Maybe they would want to have a physical existence in the form of a human body. You're denying them that.
There are a ton of similar questions.