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Solvent comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong
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Well, it sure looks like babies have a lot of things in common with people, and will become people one day, and lots of people care about them.
If your definition of "people" is going to include AI's but exclude pigs, then babies don't really have much in common with people at all.
The "will become people" discussion is being had elsewhere in this thread, but recapping briefly: if the reason for not killing babies is that they're going to become people, then (it seems to me) one must conclude that the morally correct thing to do is to create as many people as possible, since the argument is (as far as I can tell) that increasing the number of people in the world is a net positive.
I don't agree with this conclusion, and I doubt you do either. For me, I reject the premise; this nicely explains my rejection of the conclusion. Do you reject the premise, or that the conclusion follows from the premise? Why?
If this is all we're left with, it's a weak argument indeed. What if society started caring a lot about moths? Does this lend significant weight to the proposition that it should be illegal to kill moths?
I meant humans, not people. Sorry.
And I agree that we should treat animals better. I'm vegetarian.
I agree that this discussion is slightly complex. Gwern's abortion dialogue contains a lot of relevant material.
However, I don't feel that saying that "we should protect babies because one day they will be human" requires aggregate utilitarianism as opposed to average utilitarianism, which I in general prefer. Babies are already alive, and already experience things.
This argument has two functions. One is the literal meaning of "we should respect people's preferences". See discussion on the Everybody Draw Mohammed day. The other is that other people's strong moral preferences are some evidence towards the correct moral path.
Ah, the fact that you're vegetarian is somewhat illuminating. The next questions, then: Do you think pigs should be weighted more strongly as babies in the moral calculus? If not, is it because babies are going to become people? If it is because babies are going to become people, why does that matter at all?
Agreed, but again, it's very weak evidence.