Moss_Piglet comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong

27 Post author: orthonormal 01 April 2013 04:19PM

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Comment author: Bugmaster 18 September 2013 03:46:30AM -1 points [-]

their environment would not cause this to change unless the same sensory experiences would have caused their previous self to change.

I don't see why this is necessarily true, unless you treat "altruism toward humanity" as a terminal goal.

When I was a very young child, I greatly valued my brightly colored alphabet blocks; but today, I pretty much ignore them. My mind had developed to the point where I can fully visualize all the interesting permutations of the blocks in my head, should I need to do so for some reason.

Comment author: somervta 18 September 2013 08:30:35AM 1 point [-]

I don't see why this is necessarily true, unless you treat "altruism toward humanity" as a terminal goal.

Well, yes. I think that's the point. I certainly don't only value other humans for the way that they interest me - If that were so, I probably wouldn't care about most of them at all. Humanity is a terminall value to me - or, more generally, the existence and experiences of happy, engaged, thinking sentient beings. Humans qualify, regardless of whether or not uploads exist (and, of course, also qualify.

Comment author: Bugmaster 19 September 2013 10:37:30PM 0 points [-]

How do you know that "the existence and experiences of happy, engaged, thinking sentient beings" is indeed one of your terminal values, and not an instrumental value ?