Psychohistorian comments on Should humanity give birth to a galactic civilization? - Less Wrong

-6 [deleted] 17 August 2010 01:07PM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian 17 August 2010 05:28:08PM *  11 points [-]

This post is centered on a false dichotomy, to address its biggest flaw in reasoning. If we're at time t=0, and widespread misery occurs at time t=10^10, then solutions other than "Discontinue reproducing at t=0" exist. Practical concerns aside - as without practical concerns aside, there is no point in even talking about this - the appropriate solution would be to end reproduction at, say, t=10^9.6. This post arbitrarily says "Act now, or never" when, practically, we can't really act now, so any later time is equally feasible and otherwise simply better.

Comment deleted 17 August 2010 06:53:20PM [-]
Comment author: Psychohistorian 17 August 2010 09:39:44PM 0 points [-]

The false dichotomy is when to do something about it. The solution to the above problem would be that those last 100 entities were never created. That does not require us to stop creating entities right now. If the entity is never created, its utility is undefined. That's why this is a false dichotomy: you say do something now or never do something, when we could wait until very near the ultimate point of badness to remedy the problem.