Executive summary: Subjective time, rather than objective time, should be used when aggregating wellbeing, as it better captures how much experience is happening to a subject.
Key points:
Subjective time (how time is experienced) can differ from objective time, raising questions about which to use for wellbeing calculations.
Thought experiments suggest subjective time matters more for wellbeing, but it’s difficult to justify this formally.
The author proposes viewing wellbeing through a “subject view” rather than a “container view” of value.
Subjective time may be best understood as the rate of cognitive processing relative to external stimuli.
Measuring consciousness in terms of subjective time is more consistent with how we measure other mental phenomena.
This view has significant implications for how we value the experiences of different beings, but faces several unresolved challenges.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: Subjective time, rather than objective time, should be used when aggregating wellbeing, as it better captures how much experience is happening to a subject.
Key points:
Subjective time (how time is experienced) can differ from objective time, raising questions about which to use for wellbeing calculations.
Thought experiments suggest subjective time matters more for wellbeing, but it’s difficult to justify this formally.
The author proposes viewing wellbeing through a “subject view” rather than a “container view” of value.
Subjective time may be best understood as the rate of cognitive processing relative to external stimuli.
Measuring consciousness in terms of subjective time is more consistent with how we measure other mental phenomena.
This view has significant implications for how we value the experiences of different beings, but faces several unresolved challenges.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.