OK, fine, literally speaking, value drift is bad.
But if I live to see the Future, then my values will predictably be updated based on future events, and it is part of my current value system that they do so. I affirmatively value future decisions being made by entities that have taken a look at what the future is actually like and reflected on the data they gain.
Why should this change if it turns out that I don't live to see the future? I would like future-me to be one of the entities that help make future decisions, but failing that, my second-best option is to have future-others make those decisions. I don't want present-me's long dead hand to go around making stupid decisions for other people.
Even if future people's values seem bizarre to present-me, that just reflects the fact that it takes a while to process the data that leads to shifts in value. Presumably, if you show me the values and the cultural/demographic landscape of 2050 now, then by 2020 I'll endorse many of them and be chewing on most of the rest. Why arbitrarily privilege my initial disgust over my considered reaction?
Ben Goertzel:
Robin Hanson:
We all know the problem with deathism: a strong belief that death is almost impossible to avoid, clashing with undesirability of the outcome, leads people to rationalize either the illusory nature of death (afterlife memes), or desirability of death (deathism proper). But of course the claims are separate, and shouldn't influence each other.
Change in values of the future agents, however sudden of gradual, means that the Future (the whole freackin' Future!) won't be optimized according to our values, won't be anywhere as good as it could've been otherwise. It's easier to see a sudden change as morally relevant, and easier to rationalize gradual development as morally "business as usual", but if we look at the end result, the risks of value drift are the same. And it is difficult to make it so that the future is optimized: to stop uncontrolled "evolution" of value (value drift) or recover more of astronomical waste.
Regardless of difficulty of the challenge, it's NOT OK to lose the Future. The loss might prove impossible to avert, but still it's not OK, the value judgment cares not for feasibility of its desire. Let's not succumb to the deathist pattern and lose the battle before it's done. Have the courage and rationality to admit that the loss is real, even if it's too great for mere human emotions to express.