Kaj_Sotala comments on To capture anti-death intuitions, include memory in utilitarianism - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 15 January 2014 06:27AM

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Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 15 January 2014 12:22:15PM 2 points [-]

Yeah, that breaks this suggestion.

It only breaks that specific choice of memory UFU. The general approach admits lots of consistent functions.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 15 January 2014 01:08:04PM 0 points [-]

That's true.

I wonder whether professional philosophers have made any progress with this kind of an approach? At least in retrospect it feels rather obvious, but I don't recall hearing anyone mention something like this before.

Comment author: RichardChappell 15 January 2014 03:04:36PM *  4 points [-]

It's not unusual to count "thwarted aims" as a positive bad of death (as I've argued for myself in my paper Value Receptacles), which at least counts against replacing people with only slightly happier people (though still leaves open that it may be worthwhile to replace people with much happier people, if the extra happiness is sufficient to outweigh the harm of the first person's thwarted ends).

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 15 January 2014 02:11:24PM 0 points [-]

Philosophers are screwed nowadays. If they apply the scientific method and reductionism to social sciences topics they cut away too much. If they stay with vague notions which do not cut away the details they are accused of being vague. The vaguesness is there for a reason: It it kind of abstraction of the essential complexity of the abstracted domain.