I doubt human value is particularly fragile. Human value has evolved and morphed over time and will continue to do so. It already takes multiple different forms. It will likely evolve in future in coordination with AGI and other technology. I think it's fairly robust.
Like Ben, I think it is ok (if not ideal) if our descendants' values deviate from ours, as ours have from our ancestors. The risks of attempting a world government anytime soon to prevent this outcome seem worse overall.
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.
Are you sure your intended point wasn't "values - values about other's values > values about other's values"? That point is hard to express neatly but it is a more important intuitive point and one that seems to be well supported by your argument.
(By the way. I was the one who had downvoted your earlier comment, but that was actually in response to "I'm cowardly, irrational, and shallow, and I'm not afraid to admit it!" which doesn't fit well as a response to that particular exhortation. But I removed the downvote because I decided there was no point being grumpy if I wasn't going to be grumpy and specific. ;))
Effort required to achieve your goal directly < effort required to convince others to achieve your goal for you.
...and I've just spotted the glaring hole in my argument, so the reason that it was unclear is probably that it was wrong. I assume that people who share your values will act similarly to you. Before, I only considered the possibility that you would work alone (number of people contributing: 1), or that everyone you convinced would do as you did and convince more people (number of people doing work other than marketing: 0). I concluded incorre... (read more)