It is a complete failure of communication if you are under the impression that the dispute has anything to do with the truth values of sentences. I am under the impression that we are in dispute because we have different values - different aspirations for the future.
Any adequate disagreement must be about different assignment of truth values to the same meaning. For example, I disagree with the truth of the statement that we don't converge on agreement because of differences in our values, given both yours and mine preferred interpretation of "values". But explaining the reason for this condition not being the source of our disagreement requires me to explain to you my sense of "values", the normative and not factual one, which I fail to accomplish.
Any adequate disagreement must be about different assignment of truth values to the same meaning.
I think we are probably in agreement that we ought to mean the same thing by the words we use before our disagreement has any substance. But your mention of "truth values" here may be driving us into a diversion from the main issue. Because I maintain that simple "ought" sentences do not have truth values. Only "is" sentences can be analyzed as true or false in Tarskian semantics.
But that is a diversion. I look forward to yo...
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.