mattnewport comments on Survey Results - Less Wrong

48 Post author: Yvain 12 May 2009 10:09PM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 14 May 2009 12:55:55AM 0 points [-]

Assigning value to potential entities seems fraught with peril.

Such as?

Comment author: mattnewport 14 May 2009 01:00:19AM 1 point [-]

It would seem to support the biblical condemnation of onanism.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 19 May 2009 08:04:50PM 2 points [-]

"Potential entities" here doesn't mean "currently existing non-morally-significant entities that might give rise to morally significant entities", just "entities that don't exist yet". A much clearer phrasing would be something like "Does my utility function aggregate over all entities existing in spacetime, or only those existing now?" IMO, the latter is obviously wrong, either being dynamically inconsistent if "now" is defined indexically, or, if "now" is some specific time, implying that we should bind ourselves not to care about people born after that time even once they do exist.