= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
DanArmak comments on Malthusian copying: mass death of unhappy life-loving uploads - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (82)
Stuart, it sounds like you think that the life of the typical animal, and of the typical human in history, were not worth living -- you'd prefer that they had never existed. Since you seem to think your own life worth living, you must see people like you as a rare exception, and may be unsure if your existence justifies all the suffering your ancestors went through to produce you. And you'd naturally be wary of a future of descendants with lives more like your ancestors' than like your own. What you'd most want from the future is to stop change enough to ensure that people very much like you continue to dominate.
If we conceive of "death" broadly, then pretty much any competitive scenario will have lots of "death", if we look at it on a large enough scale. But this hardly implies that individuals will often feel the emotional terror of an impending death - that depends far more on framing and psychology.
As a slight aside: I've been arguing recently that we should use moral theories that are not universally applicable, but have better results than existing universal theories when they are applicable.
In this case, you correctly point out that many moral theories have conflicts between their evaluation of the value of past lives (possibly negative) and their valuation of present existence (positive). Personally, I answer this by saying my moral theory doesn't need to make counterfactual choices about things in the past. It's enough that it be consistent about the future. I think that's a plausible answer, here, to the question of whether "my existence justifies the past suffering of my ancestors".