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army1987 comments on Population Ethics Shouldn't Be About Maximizing Utility - Less Wrong Discussion

0 Post author: Ghatanathoah 18 March 2013 02:35AM

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Tags: morality utility ethics fun values utilitarianism philosophy ai theory

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Comment author: [deleted] 23 March 2013 09:10:52PM 1 point [-]

Now let's take the next step, the transition from population A+ to population B. Take some of the utility from the human beings and convert it into paperclips. This is a good thing, right?

No it isn't.

Comment author: Ghatanathoah 27 March 2013 04:53:20PM -1 points [-]

I expected some people might reject the paperclipper example. That's why I also included the ones with animals and sociopaths. What do you think of those?

Comment author: [deleted] 28 March 2013 06:29:09PM 0 points [-]

Personally, I think the same about the animals, and am in doubt but lean towards thinking the same about the sociopaths. OTOH, people who think it would be a good thing for animals to be better off even if humans were worse off aren't very rare, and I have definitely seen several people on Facebook argue (I'm not sure how seriously) that it would be a good thing for humans to extinct if that made animals better off.

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