How does a purely rational mind feel about the inevitable over-population issue that will occur if more and more lives are saved and/or extended by technology?
Overpopulation isn’t caused by technology. It’s caused by having too many kids, and not using resources well enough. Technology has drastically increased our efficiency with resources, allowing us to easily grow enough to feed everyone.
Does a purely rational mind value life less or more?
Does a purely rational mind value life less or more?
Specifying that a mind is rational does not specify how much it values life.
That is correct but it is also probably the case that rational mind would propagate better from it’s other values, to the value of it’s own life. For instance if your arm is trapped under boulder, human as is would either be unable to cut off own arm, or do it at suboptimal time (too late), compared to the agent that can propagate everything that it values in the world, to the value of it’s life, and have that huge value win vs the pain. Furthermore, it would correctly propagate pain later (assuming it knows it’ll eventually have to cut off own arm) into the decision now. So it would act as if it values life more and pain less.
Well, the value of life, lacking specifiers, should be able to refer to the total of the value of life (as derived from other goals and intrinsic value if any); my post is rather explicit in that it speaks of the total. Of course you can take ‘value life’ to mean only the intrinsic value of life, but it is pretty clear that is not what OP meant if we assume that OP is not entirely stupid. He is correct in the sense that the full value of life is affected by rationality. Rational person should only commit suicide in some very few circumstances where it truly results in maximum utility given the other values not accomplished if you are dead (e.g. so that your children can cook and eat your body, or like in “28 days later” killing yourself in the 10 seconds after infection to avoid becoming a hazard, that kind of stuff). It can be said that irrational person can’t value the life correctly (due to incorrect propagation).
Overpopulation isn’t caused by technology. It’s caused by having too many kids, and not using resources well enough. Technology has drastically increased our efficiency with resources, allowing us to easily grow enough to feed everyone.
The utility function is not up for grabs. Specifying that a mind is rational does not specify how much it values life.
I was answering based on the idea that these are altruistic people. I really don’t know what would happen in a society full of rational egoists.
It isn’t.
That is correct but it is also probably the case that rational mind would propagate better from it’s other values, to the value of it’s own life. For instance if your arm is trapped under boulder, human as is would either be unable to cut off own arm, or do it at suboptimal time (too late), compared to the agent that can propagate everything that it values in the world, to the value of it’s life, and have that huge value win vs the pain. Furthermore, it would correctly propagate pain later (assuming it knows it’ll eventually have to cut off own arm) into the decision now. So it would act as if it values life more and pain less.
You were talking about instrumental values? I thought you were talking about terminal values.
Well, the value of life, lacking specifiers, should be able to refer to the total of the value of life (as derived from other goals and intrinsic value if any); my post is rather explicit in that it speaks of the total. Of course you can take ‘value life’ to mean only the intrinsic value of life, but it is pretty clear that is not what OP meant if we assume that OP is not entirely stupid. He is correct in the sense that the full value of life is affected by rationality. Rational person should only commit suicide in some very few circumstances where it truly results in maximum utility given the other values not accomplished if you are dead (e.g. so that your children can cook and eat your body, or like in “28 days later” killing yourself in the 10 seconds after infection to avoid becoming a hazard, that kind of stuff). It can be said that irrational person can’t value the life correctly (due to incorrect propagation).