From: Matt Gingell (mjg223@is7.nyu.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 01 1999 - 20:26:20 MST
> Sure, people will kill themselves in difficult situations
> (and/or because their brains are out of balance), but strictly
> speaking this isn't rational, certainly not in this day and age
> with its prospect of immortality and sustainable mood enhancement
> (among other things).
Sustainable mood enhancement? Should my life's goal be a lobotomy and
a morphine drip? You seem to be advocating a Mario Brothers vision of
meaningful life - stay alive as long as possible so you can keep
jumping for pleasure points. Even positing that this is the only
rational course, why would suicide not be justified if I have good
reason to belive my total score from this point on will be less than
zero - as I belive was the motivation for the hypothetical life
imprisonment scenario?
And why should the rational course necessarily be determined the simple
summation of all future pleasurable experiences? It seems to me
there's a factor in the sequence which decays over time - I wouldn't
submit to a million years of agony, starting now, even if the
following million were quite nice.
Pleasure is a good way to pass the time, but being dead doesn't mean
you've lost, it means you've stopped playing the game. Honestly, I
can't imagine anything more horrible than the prospect of living
literally forever.
-matt
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