Preserving morality doesn't mean that we have nothing more to decide, that there are no new ideas to create. New ideas (and new normative considerations) can be created while keeping morality. Value drift is destruction of morality, but lack of value drift doesn't preclude development, especially since morality endorses development (in the ways it does).
Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement. Current normative considerations that we have (i.e. morality) describes what kinds of change we should consider improvement. Forgetting what changes we consider to be improvement (i.e. value drift) will result in future change that is not moral (i.e. not improvement from the current standpoint).
I find myself in agreement with all this, except perhaps:
Forgetting what changes we consider to be improvement (i.e. value drift) will result in future change that is not moral (i.e. not improvement from the current standpoint).
Perhaps we are using the term 'value drift' differently.
Would you consider the change from our ancestors values to modern western values to be 'value drift'? What about change from the values of the age-10 version of yourself versus the age-20 or the current?
The current world is far from an idealization of my ancestor's values,...
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.