IIRC, Vinding used a similar example in his SFE book but framed it using ‘impartial’ terms.
For impartiality, choice (1) might be modified to ‘the excruciating, “maybe infinite” pain, for 1 hour (no long-term consequences) of one’s own child’. In that case, I think it’s plausible that humans would choose (2) over (1).
I think different humans would choose differently. According to various people in this comment section and elsewhere, childbirth is extremely painful and lasts on the order of an hour. Yet people still choose to have children, even though some of those children will grow up to experience childbirth. My own tentative answer is that I’d ask to experience the pain myself a bit first, and also want to get a clearer sense of what life would be like afterwards—if it’s a normal healthy late-20th-century middle class American life, I could see myself choosing 1, pending results from experiencing it myself for a bit.
Maybe I should follow in Ren’s footsteps and get a tattoo.
Yeah fair. It seems more accurate to say that some humans would choose (the modified, impartial form of) (2) over (1), and some other humans would choose (1) over modified (2).
It’s just my intuition that people wouldn’t want to subject their child to excruciating physical torture that could be ‘infinite’ in intensity, and although both options are bad, this would seem worse than the death of one’s child.
P.S. Not sure why people are downvoting this? Intuitions can serve as weak evidence.
First of all, I doubt it. People don’t even commit suicide to avoid 1 hour pain (usually the suicide-due-to-pain people are those who don’t anticipate ever getting better).
Second, even assuming you’re right, what happens in that world is that the emotional pain still trumps the actual pain. Like, if people prefer their own pain to their child’s death, then the death of a child is worse than the pain of a hermit (someone with no family). It’s not necessarily worse than the pain for a child… but only if that child has parents. Is that your model? It has important implications.
IIRC, Vinding used a similar example in his SFE book but framed it using ‘impartial’ terms.
For impartiality, choice (1) might be modified to ‘the excruciating, “maybe infinite” pain, for 1 hour (no long-term consequences) of one’s own child’. In that case, I think it’s plausible that humans would choose (2) over (1).
I think different humans would choose differently. According to various people in this comment section and elsewhere, childbirth is extremely painful and lasts on the order of an hour. Yet people still choose to have children, even though some of those children will grow up to experience childbirth. My own tentative answer is that I’d ask to experience the pain myself a bit first, and also want to get a clearer sense of what life would be like afterwards—if it’s a normal healthy late-20th-century middle class American life, I could see myself choosing 1, pending results from experiencing it myself for a bit.
Maybe I should follow in Ren’s footsteps and get a tattoo.
Yeah fair. It seems more accurate to say that some humans would choose (the modified, impartial form of) (2) over (1), and some other humans would choose (1) over modified (2).
‘In that case, I think it’s plausible that humans would choose (2) over (1).’ What’s the evidence for this?
It’s just my intuition that people wouldn’t want to subject their child to excruciating physical torture that could be ‘infinite’ in intensity, and although both options are bad, this would seem worse than the death of one’s child.
P.S. Not sure why people are downvoting this? Intuitions can serve as weak evidence.
First of all, I doubt it. People don’t even commit suicide to avoid 1 hour pain (usually the suicide-due-to-pain people are those who don’t anticipate ever getting better).
Second, even assuming you’re right, what happens in that world is that the emotional pain still trumps the actual pain. Like, if people prefer their own pain to their child’s death, then the death of a child is worse than the pain of a hermit (someone with no family). It’s not necessarily worse than the pain for a child… but only if that child has parents. Is that your model? It has important implications.