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Automaton comments on How should I help us achieve immortality? - Less Wrong
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I agree that if we're only considering the person who dies and the replacement person, that preventing someone's death and creating another person are pretty much the same, but I think the pain caused to others by someone dying is usually outweighs the happiness caused by bringing another person into existence. In any case, the costs of death to the people who are still alive need to be taken into account.
While there is sadness associated with death, that cost is dwarfed by the expense of raising and training replacements, and people getting less effective as they age.
My point wasn't that death doesn't matter. It's just not the end of the world.
Yeah it is. The end of the world for the person that's dying.
Well, as far as you know, it is the end of the world. Solipsism is a rationally defensible position, though I personally feel it's only worth keeping in mind to remind one of the limits of knowledge, and is not a philosophy that should actually govern behavior. (Thus this is intended as a comment only, not a refutation).
This reminds me of a story Bertrand Russell liked to tell: (Quoting from Wikipedia allegedly from Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits)
Nope. You'd have to post an output of your reasoning to give us an opportunity to find a bug. Other than that, I can only direct you to the metaethics and zombie sequences.
Also, using the word "rationally" here is a bad idea, since it doesn't add anything other than misleading connotational gloss. (A position defensible "rationally" as opposed to defensible in what manner?)
Suggestion noted. I posted it because I felt that it was tasty connotational gloss, but accuracy is more important than "taste".
"Nope. You'd have to post an output of your reasoning to give us an opportunity to find a bug."
Are you saying you disagree with my statement, or that positions can only be claimed to be defensible if reasoning is provided?
I'm saying that your statement is wrong, but I can only convince you of that if you give more information about why you believe it, and what exactly it is that you believe.
How rationally defensible? If you're 99% sure, you'd effectively value everyone else at 1% what you value yourself. This would still be enough to make you dedicate your life to charity, for example.
Agreed. That's why I think it's incorrect to use solipsism as a basis to decide ethics.
Rationality is about finding the unique set of things to believe, and how strongly to do so. It's not about defending ideas; that sounds like defending the bottom line.
I didn't suggest it was about defending ideas. I only suggested that a particular idea could be defended by rationality. I don't think that implies the sole use of rationality is to defend ideas.