scrape_r_rational/data/cache/3ooef0.md

[Q]Pick your life-span.

Post:

An interesting question I've seen elsewhere dealing with optimism vs. caution wrt one's life.

Basically, a random -conveniently anthropmorphic- alien decides to grant you as much life as you choose to have. You are generally at your peak health and stay in a sort of stasis for as long as you're alive, until you die after a set period of time of your choosing. You cannot really be locked down in horrific scenarios like being buried alive permanently, but it'll take some time for circumstances to conspire to let you out if you do indeed get grabbed and trapped. But it won't be ever permanent.

You can't set conditions on your immorality (e.g. "I want to live so long as I am not being hunted by every government on Earth). You have to pick a particular amount of time. 10 years, a thousand, a billion, up to you. But, once set you have to live it all out. Permanent stasis fails much like permanent entrapment, though there is again some randomness to it. You cannot opt out. You must pick an amount of time right at that moment.

Luckily for you, enhancements can be grafted and will become part of your unchanging state, but you still have to have a purely physical body (no uploading). Barring enhancements you're assumed to function as a normal human would (sustenance being optional) psychologically.

So, what is the maximum "safe" amount of time you're willing to gamble on life still being comfortable and worth living for? A hundred years? A hundred thousand? A billion?

Comments:

• u/eaglejarl:

  The interesting point here is that I'm going to live and remain healthy. That implies that the universe cannot end or become completely unfriendly to humans until I die...and I can't die. 
  
  This means that if I choose G(G(G(G65))) or some other ridiculous number, I can help the human race survive past the currently projected end of the universe. 
  
  It also means I don't need a spacesuit for ET EVA work. That's pretty awesome.
  

  • u/gbear605:

    There could be some magic field making it so you're still alive even though the rest of the universe has ended. Remember, alien magic.
    

    • u/kaukamieli:

      Doesn't have to be magic. Technically this guy might not be counted as a human any more. Or the machines might just want to study him and takes him captive.
      

  • u/Empiricist_or_not:

    You are making my first response, so much less selfish, thank you
    

    • u/eaglejarl:

      You're welcome.
      

• u/None:

  Yeah, I like being sane, but not more than I like being alive. I figure I pick some immense number - G65 years or something. I'm guaranteed to experience an unmatched magnitude of suffering, but I also get to see the ultimate fate of the universe, personally. Hell, I might even be able to sculpt what comes next, if this immortality binds my substance to existence, the only node of curved spacetime in an immense flatness. Perhaps I become a lonely god, drifting through every configuration of atoms possible, including the ones that include meaningful other entities. Perhaps there's nothing, and more nothing, and more nothing, and whatever degree of change my broken mind is allowed has it reform into coherence and insanity a number of times beyond all human comprehension.
  

  • u/gabbalis:

    > G65
    Too small
    
    G(G(G(G... *G65 iterations* ... G(65)))))...
    is where it's at.
    

    • u/scooterboo2:

      That's the ~~biggest~~ second biggest number I've ever seen.
      

      • u/EliezerYudkowsky:

        Lol, that's just f sub omega plus two of 66 or thereabouts.
        

        • u/TimTravel:

          The [busy beaver numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver) are laughing right now.
          

• u/GaBeRockKing:

  predict to the best of your ability how long it will take for cryogenics to arise. live a few decades past that (just in case), die, get frozen, then get resurrected at a later date.
  

  • u/None:

    You can't die. Not until the time you decided arrives. 
    
    You can't be permanently frozen/unconscious either. Statis and being trapped are both crapshoots, with it being unreliable the longer you are under (and then the option being blocked when you come out so you can't come out/be released for three seconds, reset the timer and go back under).
    

    • u/GaBeRockKing:

      The idea is that immediately after you die of you magic power, you get put under cryogenics to be later revived. After all, you know your exact date of death.
      

• u/None:

  > what is the maximum "safe" amount of time you're willing to gamble on life still being comfortable and worth living for?
  
  -
  
  > You cannot really be locked down in horrific scenarios
  
  Infinity. By premise.
  

• u/diraniola:

  I tend to agree with the googolplex years theory. I want to live forever but if I have to put a number on it give me some time after heat death of the universe.
  

• u/psychothumbs:

  I guess the big worry of picking a really huge number is the increasing risk of drifting for an eternity in the blackness of space. I admit that's a disturbing thought.
  

• u/MugaSofer:

  A trillion years. Eat me, heat death!
  
  ... huh, Wikipedia claims that you can still get negentropy from black holes for a googol years.
  
  Anyway, my point is that I don't anticipate getting bored of eternity. Why would you? The overwhelming majority of people have anticipated living forever in the afterlife; the "angsty immortal" trope seems pretty damn flimsy, and largely invented to keep characters relateable in modern fantasy.
  

  • u/None:

    Sure, but the angsty immortal actually has the advantage of  existing in a time with people too. 
    
    And Heaven is literally eternity by fiat.God tells you it'll last forever *and* that you'll have fun. God can do stuff like that, being a concept invented to make those things possible.  *You* have to worry about danger, in many forms. You can't be trapped but being stranded in many ways is still a possibility, then you're in an actual hell.
    

    • u/MugaSofer:

      I don't think most people who get stranded places describe it as "actual hell", and the OP says events will conspire to free me if I'm buried or whatever, so the worst that can happen is a brief period of sensory deprivation. Also, I return to a "normal psychological state", so I can't be permanently traumatised.
      

    • u/Geminii27:

      Precisely. What's 'trapped'? If you're on an island which can provide all you need to survive, are you trapped? If you're confined to the surface of the Earth, does that count as trapped because you can't get to the rest of the universe?
      
      What if a planet is terraformed to be Earthlike, and you're put on it and it's fired off to randomly wander the galaxy? Are you trapped?
      

• u/frodo_skywalker:

  5 million years. I'd like to live forever, but not alone. I figure if humanity hasn't got immortality (and hopefully resurrection, if they have access immediately post-mortem) by then they never will. Maybe because it's impossible (I doubt this) or maybe because they're gone.
  

• u/Vermora:

  I think about 1 week.
  
  One of the most important things for me, is the ability to end my life at any time I should choose. I would not be happy to be forced to live without that basic liberty.
  

• u/ArmokGoB:

  Obvious trap. 1 Planck time. Or whatever else the shortest alowed time is, to minimize the risk of something awfull extending my perception of it.
  

• u/E-o_o-3:

  Forever, duh. Heat death just broke, because according to these rules my own body is now a neverending source of free energy. I have a moral responsibility to pick "forever" for the far-future's sake regardless of my personal gratifications - there may come a time when humanity itself runs on my bodily functions.
  
  Anyway, subjectivity is easily manipulated. On the day I feel all hope is lost and it ceases to be worth it, I just do suicide without death by wireheading myself out. I think a wireheader done correctly is at least not an abomination - at worst morally neutral.
  

• u/Articanine:

  Infinite time, after all isn't immortality the goal of transhumanism
  

• u/Transfuturist:

  Mu.
  

• u/IomKg:

  15 years i suppose..
  

  • u/MugaSofer:

    Fifteen years?!
    

    • u/IomKg:

      Seems about right, I shouldn't get too bored in 15 years, and it won't be too bad for my family if i die at that age.
      

      • u/MugaSofer:

        But ... aren't you expecting to live longer than that as it is?
        

        • u/IomKg:

          The topic was about picking your lifespan, not about extending your lifespan :)
          

• u/LeonCross:

  This...this is a pain in the ass.
  
  On the one hand, I'd enjoy living "forever", though a better way to put that is probably indefinitely. 
  
  I'm also not bothered by the concept of death. I've no idea why the concept of permanent 0 is supposed to be scary.
  
  So, so long as my existence is at a +1 value, I'm happy to continue living. If it's at 0 then I'm indifferent and if it seems like it's going to be below 0 for prolonged periods of time then 0 is the obviously better solution.
  
  So yes, this situation is a pain in the ass. I don't want to pick a time frame that would kill me while I'm still existing at a positive value. But I don't want to pick a time frame that would leave me alive in a prolonged negative value.
  
  Fortunately, you specify that I'll never be trapped, with entrapment being one of only two things that register a -2 on my scale (with -2 representing things that death is an immediate better alternative to.)
  
  So the only thing I have to worry about is boredom.
  
  How long does the convenient anthropomorphic alien give me to think this through?
  

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