"At some point in forever everyone will be tortured horribly enough to make everything up to that point not worth it."

"That is definitely an interesting perspective and I can certainly understand why you have it."

"I'm not too fragile to argue with."

"If we ever get to the point of becoming able to fork people who can't be chipped at all. or of chipping more kinds of people, if anything like that did happen to me I could just give over the job of being me and extant to a pre-that fork and then everything I had done and that had happened to me before then would matter because she would have it."

"But it still wouldn't be worth being tortured."

"But if the version of me who was tortured stopped existing what would be the difference between that world and a world where it had never happened?"

"In one, there's still a person, who will because forever is a long time eventually get tortured."

"...I mean the difference between the world I got tortured and then forked a version that didn't and erased the version that did and a world where I didn't get tortured, not between the first world and one where I don't fork and stop existing anyway."

"...in one of them you were tortured? Would you be okay with being tortured if I told you you'd forget it afterwards? Obviously torture is worse than not that!"

"It wouldn't be okay, but if I found out I had been tortured horribly yesterday and forgot about it I wouldn't want to stop existing."

"Well, no. I want to stop existing because I know that the worst existing can get is much, much worse than the best it can get, and that it will inevitably happen again. I do not want to stop existing because I was tortured even independent of any effects that had."

"Right. So if it's possible to ensure that being tortured doesn't have relevant effects, then it's not a reason to stop living, because then you get to keep the best parts and not the worst parts."

"And then the only reason to stop living is that life is not worth it."

"Isn't worth what, exactly, if you can get rid of all the torture that happens?"

"I can't figure out if you're being deliberately obtuse. A million years of happy life, followed by a thousand years of torture and then death, is worse than never existing at all. People don't realize that because they don't have enough of a reference point. Therefore, I would prefer not to exist even if nothing had ever happened to me, because someday it will."

"It's not deliberate deliberate but it might be, I dunno, subconsciously on purpose? This is why I didn't want to argue with you, you know, not because I thought you were too fragile, because I prefer to continue to prefer to live and I suspect if we actually sat down and compared facts and decided which was objectively better you might be right and I don't want that."

"That's very reasonable. If it helps any, if it were only that, I'd keep on living even though I'd expect it not to be worth it for me, because it might be that I could make the world better and protect other people somehow."

"A little bit."

"Sorry."

"Well, I continue to prefer not to die, so no harm done.":

"I will not try to persuade you otherwise."

"Thanks."

"Bar, can you recommend books written by alternate universe versions of people?"

I'm afraid I can only identify althood in people I can observe in person.

"No worries." He turns back to Imliss. "Do you have plans for killing time in here?"