Other concepts that happen to also be termed "values", such as your ancestors' values, don't say anything more about comparative goodness of the future-configurations, and if they do, then that is also part of your values.
I'm having difficulty understanding the relevance of this sentence. It sounds like you think I'm treating "my ancestors' values" as a term in my own set of values, instead of a separate set of values that overlaps with mine in some respects.
My ancestors tried to steer their future away from economic systems that included money loaned at interest. They were unsuccessful, and that turned out to be fortunate; loaning money turned out to be economically valuable. If they had known in advance that loaning money would work out in everyone's best interest, they would have updated their values (future-configuration preferences).
Of course, you could argue that neither of us really cared about loaning at interest; what we really cared about was a higher-level goal like a healthy economy. It would be convenient if we could establish a restate our values in a well-organized hierarchy, with a node at the top that was invariant on available information. But even if that could be done, which I doubt, it would still leave a role for available information in deciding something as concrete as a preferred future-configuration.
Of course, you could argue that neither of us really cared about loaning at interest; what we really cared about was a higher-level goal like a healthy economy. It would be convenient if we could establish a restate our values in a well-organized hierarchy, with a node at the top that was invariant on available information.
That's closer to the sense I wanted to convey with this word.
...But even if that could be done, which I doubt, it would still leave a role for available information in deciding something as concrete as a preferred future-configuration.
Ben Goertzel:
Robin Hanson:
We all know the problem with deathism: a strong belief that death is almost impossible to avoid, clashing with undesirability of the outcome, leads people to rationalize either the illusory nature of death (afterlife memes), or desirability of death (deathism proper). But of course the claims are separate, and shouldn't influence each other.
Change in values of the future agents, however sudden of gradual, means that the Future (the whole freackin' Future!) won't be optimized according to our values, won't be anywhere as good as it could've been otherwise. It's easier to see a sudden change as morally relevant, and easier to rationalize gradual development as morally "business as usual", but if we look at the end result, the risks of value drift are the same. And it is difficult to make it so that the future is optimized: to stop uncontrolled "evolution" of value (value drift) or recover more of astronomical waste.
Regardless of difficulty of the challenge, it's NOT OK to lose the Future. The loss might prove impossible to avert, but still it's not OK, the value judgment cares not for feasibility of its desire. Let's not succumb to the deathist pattern and lose the battle before it's done. Have the courage and rationality to admit that the loss is real, even if it's too great for mere human emotions to express.