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VAuroch comments on Open thread, 24-30 March 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Metus 25 March 2014 07:42AM

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Comment author: Nisan 25 March 2014 04:55:25PM *  5 points [-]

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.

Comment author: VAuroch 28 March 2014 06:45:18PM -1 points [-]

on whether the person's experiences are veridical.

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

Comment author: Nisan 28 March 2014 07:03:36PM 1 point [-]

Yes, I mean (for example) that if a person believes they're married to someone, their life's welfare could depend on whether their spouse is a real person or if it's a simple chatbot. Also, if a person feels that they've discovered a deep insight, their life's welfare could depend on whether they have actually discovered such an insight.

Comment author: VAuroch 28 March 2014 08:38:30PM -2 points [-]

So it's just jargon. OK.