I asked Parfit to give this talk at that EAGxOxford, a conference Jacob Lagerros and I were the lead organizers of [edit: I see James Aung posted this, who was on the team too!]. It was one of the last talks of his life. I remember writing him an email about what talk to give, and he wrote a very long word document back as an attachment. He was a very careful thinker.
Also I remember a pretty endearing interaction between him and Anders Sandberg, where Anders pretended to be a fan and got Parfit to sign a copy of his book. (It was a joke because Anders and Parfit were former roommates and good friends.)
In the Q&A after this talk, Sandberg asked “What is the moral relevance of Apple laptops booting half a second slower?” (since on Parfit’s simple view of aggregation, with millions of devices, this is equivalent to a massive loss of life). I always thought Parfit was being rude by ignoring the question, but your comment makes it seem more like joshing.
It’s nice to see this again <3
I asked Parfit to give this talk at that EAGxOxford, a conference Jacob Lagerros and I were the lead organizers of [edit: I see James Aung posted this, who was on the team too!]. It was one of the last talks of his life. I remember writing him an email about what talk to give, and he wrote a very long word document back as an attachment. He was a very careful thinker.
Also I remember a pretty endearing interaction between him and Anders Sandberg, where Anders pretended to be a fan and got Parfit to sign a copy of his book. (It was a joke because Anders and Parfit were former roommates and good friends.)
In the Q&A after this talk, Sandberg asked “What is the moral relevance of Apple laptops booting half a second slower?” (since on Parfit’s simple view of aggregation, with millions of devices, this is equivalent to a massive loss of life). I always thought Parfit was being rude by ignoring the question, but your comment makes it seem more like joshing.
Heeheehee. Sounds like Anders poking fun at his friend live.