Lostinfrance

The concept Rob Fisher is describing is called "comparative advantage". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage "David Ricardo developed the classical theory of comparative advantage in 1817 to explain why countries engage in international trade even when one country's workers are more efficient at producing every single good than workers in other countries ... Widely regarded as one of the most powerful yet counter-intuitive insights in economics, Ricardo's theory implies that comparative advantage rather than absolute advantage is responsible for much of international trade."

@Insane,Some people may have said that that parliament wouldn't vote to invoke Article 50, but I haven't.

@djechlin, no it's not. It's just fulfilling a promise. Here is a link to the official UK government leaflet, issued to every household, stating why the Government believed we should vote to remain : eureferendum.gov.uk/… On page 14 it reads "This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide."

@Insane, "isn't this the same old answer everyone keeps giving". Yes, and that should tell you something.

@Insane, "What does political suicide even mean other than 'people will hate you'." It means people will not vote for you.

One poor woman in The Fearless Vampire Killers attempts to fend off a vampire with a crucifix only to be told, "Oy vey, have you got the wrong vampire".

One key question is, does lending count as spending?

I'm not objecting to this thread being moved to chat, since it was getting unduly long. But it would be nice to have all of it moved to chat! The post I wrote that said this scenario is a type of purgatory rather than hell and Samuel's reply to it don't seem to be present now, and the thread doesn't make sense without them. I also think I remember some posts by others that I can't see here. Or have I just failed to press the right buttons to read the entire thing?

@Samuel, turning to the less contentious subject of the practicalities of posthumous torment, do people/animals harmed by your wish but without your presence "count" as lives you have to experience? It seems clear to me that if a military commander orders a massacre, then he suffers through all those lives, even if he was thousands of miles away when he wrote the order. But what about a boss who lays off all the workers in a factory? What about the meat animals a person eats - he didn't specifically order their deaths, but by his willingness to buy meat knowingly ensures that they will die.

@Samuel, I quite agree on that view of hell not being exclusively Christian. The popular Taoist and Muslim views of hell are very similar. I have stated no personal view on the existence of hell or its duration; nor do I intend to. My guess is that your guess as to my opinion is mistaken, but since I also agree on the undesirability of religious discussion on this forum, I will say no more. All I did say was that your extremely interesting scenario, being finite and rehabilitative, actually resembles the Catholic view of Purgatory far more than it does hell.

@Samuel, your first sentence states what you see as wrong with the traditional popular Christian view of hell. Your second sentence states the superior power of rehabilitation that could be provided by means of forced empathy. This appears to me to be pretty much exactly a comparison to Catholic mythology and a statement of the merits of this mythology. I quite see that what you want most is a calculation of duration, but it's not unreasonable for responders to discuss these other subjects given that you did mention them. It is human nature to sometimes prefer talking to computation.

@Samuel you write that you live through 'The "entire life" is from birth to death of the creature in question (shorter time for things you kill, obviously). You live through the life only once, no matter how much harm you did to it.' For people who believe/know that this is the nature of hell, this provides a perverse incentive to go on and kill anything they harm even slightly.

@guildsbounty, very good point. Time dilation might make the generation ship model of trade work better in a universe where inhabited planets are widely spaced. However moving at relativistic speeds degrades the ability of the ship to gather materials - any contact between ship and asteroid is more likely to be in the form of an almighty explosion than mining. Which leads on to the general point that accelerating people to a speed where the benefits of time dilation can cut in is just generally difficult and dangerous. But please do expand on your comment if you feel inclined!

@Fhnuzoag, yes, on the grounds that instantaneous information transfer violates special relativity.