The few times I raised this question in the past, my comments were met with either indifference or hostility. I will try to raise it one more time in this open thread. If you think the question deserves a downvote, could you please, in addition to downvoting me, leave a brief comment explaining your rationale for doing so? I promise to upvote all comments providing such explanations.
So, here's the question: What is the reason for defining the class of beings whose volitions are to be coherently extrapolated as the class of present human beings? Why present and not also future (or past!)? Why human and not, say, mammals, males, or friends of Eliezer Yudkowsky?
Note that the question is not: Why should we value only present people? This way of framing the problem already assumes that "we" (i.e., present human beings) are the subjects whose preferences are to be accorded relevance in the process of coherent extrapolation, and that the interests of any other being (present or future, human or nonhuman) should matter only to the extent that "we" value them. What I am asking for, rather, is a justification of the assumption that only "our" preferences matter.
No one else seems to be giving what is IMO the correct answer; I want the values of a created FAI to match my own, extrapolated. ie moral selfishness.
I would actually prefer that the extrapolation seed be drawn only from SI supporters (or ideally just me, but that's unlikely to fly), because I'm uneasy about what happens if some of my values turn out to be memetic, and they get swamped/outvoted by a coherent extrapolated deathist or hedonist memplex. Or if you include, for example, uplifted sharks in the process.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.