Comment on True Ending: Sacrificial Fire (7/8)

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:24:29 GMT

Well, it's not like it's hard to see reason in Superhappies' values.

1) I, personally, don't have a terminal value of non-cannibalism. Actual reason I don't eat babies now is a result of multiple other values:

I value human life, so I consider killing a human to get some food a huge utility loss.

Any diseases initial owner of meat had contracted are almost 100% transferable to me. Any poisons that accumulated in initial meat owner's body will also accumulate in mine. Also, humans eat a lot of junk food. Eating humans is bad for one's health.

So, I don't have any problem with eating safe-to-eat human meat that is not produced by killing conscious human beings. I would be actually curious to taste, for example, vat-grown clone meat grown from my own cells sample. This position may not be held by an average human, but I don't think it's particularly disturbing from transhumanist point of view.

2) I consider humans' desire to keep their identity and humanity at least in part being status-quo bias. Also, humans don't really stay themselves for long. For example, 5 year old human is quite different from that same human at 10, 15, 20, 25, etc. Change is gradual, but it's real and quite big. (Sorry, I have no idea how to measure this quantitatively, but, for example, my 5-year-old-self is an entirely different person from my current self) That said, I personally don't value status quo all that much.

3) Now if we were to somehow describe set of humanity's core values we could try to reason against Superhappies. But I fail to see ability to feel pain as necessary part of this set.

All that considered, I don't see Superhappies' proposal as horrifying. At least, I don't think decision to kill 15 billion people to delay Superhappies' modifying humanity is better than decision to enter species-melting-pot with losing (some of) humanity and getting neat bonuses in form of interstellar peace, and better survival rate for combined 3-component species.

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