But basing the decision of which being gets to have the descendants of its current mind-state realized in the future on the awesomeness of those descendants rather than solely on the current mind-state seems wrong.
Why throw away that information? Because it’s about the future?
I don’t know how to derive my impression from first principles. So the answer has to be: because my moral intuitions tell me to do so. But they only tell me so in this particular case—I don’t have a general rule of disregarding future information.
Ok. I will try to articulate my reasoning, and see if that helps clarify your moral intuitions: a “life” is an ill-defined concept, compared to a “lifespan.” So when we have to choose one of two individuals, the way our choice changes the future depends on the lifespans involved. If the choice is between saving someone 10 years old with 70 years left or someone 70 years old with 10 years left, then one choice results in 60 more years of aliveness than the other! (Obviously, aliveness is not the only thing we care about, but this is good enough for a first approximation to illustrate the idea.)
And so the state between now and the next second (i.e. the current mind-state) is just a rounding error when you look at the change to the whole future; in the future of the human toddler it is mostly not a human toddler, whereas in the future of the adult pig it is mostly an adult pig. If we prefer adult humans to adult pigs, and we know that adult pigs have a 0% chance of becoming adult humans and human toddlers have a ~98% chance of becoming adult humans, then combining those pieces of knowledge gives us a clear choice.
If this is not a general principle, it may be worthwhile to try and tease out what’s special about this case, and why that seems special. It may be that this is a meme that’s detached from its justification, and that you should excise it, or that there is a worthwhile principle here you should apply in other cases.
Why throw away that information? Because it’s about the future?
I don’t know how to derive my impression from first principles. So the answer has to be: because my moral intuitions tell me to do so. But they only tell me so in this particular case—I don’t have a general rule of disregarding future information.
Ok. I will try to articulate my reasoning, and see if that helps clarify your moral intuitions: a “life” is an ill-defined concept, compared to a “lifespan.” So when we have to choose one of two individuals, the way our choice changes the future depends on the lifespans involved. If the choice is between saving someone 10 years old with 70 years left or someone 70 years old with 10 years left, then one choice results in 60 more years of aliveness than the other! (Obviously, aliveness is not the only thing we care about, but this is good enough for a first approximation to illustrate the idea.)
And so the state between now and the next second (i.e. the current mind-state) is just a rounding error when you look at the change to the whole future; in the future of the human toddler it is mostly not a human toddler, whereas in the future of the adult pig it is mostly an adult pig. If we prefer adult humans to adult pigs, and we know that adult pigs have a 0% chance of becoming adult humans and human toddlers have a ~98% chance of becoming adult humans, then combining those pieces of knowledge gives us a clear choice.
If this is not a general principle, it may be worthwhile to try and tease out what’s special about this case, and why that seems special. It may be that this is a meme that’s detached from its justification, and that you should excise it, or that there is a worthwhile principle here you should apply in other cases.