Re: Cold and Dark?

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:06:48 -0500

Stumper of the Day:
If any finite lifetime isn't enough to fulfill your meaning of life, how are you going to do it in infinite time? At any point in time, you'll only have lived a finite amount of time.

(Answer below.)

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS           Typing in Dvorak          Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians   Heading for Singularity   There Is A Better Way














Answer:
If you have a goal whose fulfillment is a scalar quantity rather than a
qualitative yes-or-no, then infinite time is infinitely desirable, but
not necessary to the desirability of the finite case.