Open thread, 24-30 March 2014

Metus

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Duration set to six days to encourage Monday as first day.

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Duration set to six days to encourage Monday as first day.

I welcome criticism of my new personal favorite population axiology:

The value of a world-history that extends the current world-history is the average welfare of every life after the present moment. For people who live before and after the current moment, we need to evaluate the welfare of the portion of their life after the current moment. The welfare of a person's life is allowed to vary nonlinearly with the number of years the person lives a certain kind of life, and it's allowed to depend on whether the person's experiences are veridical.

This axiology implies that it's important to ensure that the future will contain many people who have better lives than us; it's consistent with preferring to extend someone's life by N years rather than creating a new life that lasts N years. It's immune to Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion, but doesn't automatically fall prey to the opposite of the Repugnant Conclusion. It implies that our decisions should not depend on whether the past contained a large, prosperous civilization.

There are straightforward modifications for dealing with general relativity and splitting and merging people.

The one flaw is that it's temporally consistent: If future generations average the welfare of lives after their "present moments", they will make decisions we disapprove of.

on whether the person's experiences are veridical.

Is this different from whether their perception of their experiences is correct, or is it jargon?

5solipsist12y

I build a robot that hibernates until the last person presently alive dies, then exterminates all people who are poor, unhappy, or don't like my robot. Good thing?

4philh12y

Can you give an example? It seems to me that if they decide at t_1 to maximise average welfare from t_1 to ∞, then given that welfare from t_0 to t_1 is held fixed, that decision will also maximise average welfare from t_0 to ∞. Edit: oh, I was thinking of an average over time, not people.

11

Open thread, 24-30 March 2014

11

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

11

11

Open thread, 24-30 March 2014

11

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

11