[ not a utilitarian; discount my opinion appropriately ]
This hits one of the thorniest problems with Utilitarianism: different value-over-time expectations depending on timescales and assumptions.
If one is thinking truly long-term, it’s hard to imagine what resource is more valuable than knowledge and epistemics. I guess tradeoffs in WHICH knowledge to gain/lose have to be made, but that’s an in-category comparison, not a cross-category one. Oh, and trading it away to prevent total annihilation of all thinking/feeling beings is probably right.
It’s hard to imagine what resource is more valuable than knowledge and epistemics
I think my thinking is that for utilitarians, these are generally instrumental, not terminal values. Often they’re pretty important instrumental values, but this still would mean that they could be traded off in respect to the terminal values. Of course, if they are “highly important” instrumental values, then something very large would have to be offered for a trade to be worth it. (total annihilation being one example)
I think we’re agreed that resources, including knowledge, are instrumental (though as a human, I don’t always distinguish very closely). My point was that for very-long-term terminal values, knowledge and accuracy of evaluation (epistemics) are far more important than almost anything else.
It may be that there’s a declining marginal value for knowledge, as there is for most resources, and once you know enough to confidently make the tradeoffs, you should do so. But if you’re uncertain, go for the knowledge.
[ not a utilitarian; discount my opinion appropriately ]
This hits one of the thorniest problems with Utilitarianism: different value-over-time expectations depending on timescales and assumptions.
If one is thinking truly long-term, it’s hard to imagine what resource is more valuable than knowledge and epistemics. I guess tradeoffs in WHICH knowledge to gain/lose have to be made, but that’s an in-category comparison, not a cross-category one. Oh, and trading it away to prevent total annihilation of all thinking/feeling beings is probably right.
I think my thinking is that for utilitarians, these are generally instrumental, not terminal values. Often they’re pretty important instrumental values, but this still would mean that they could be traded off in respect to the terminal values. Of course, if they are “highly important” instrumental values, then something very large would have to be offered for a trade to be worth it. (total annihilation being one example)
I think we’re agreed that resources, including knowledge, are instrumental (though as a human, I don’t always distinguish very closely). My point was that for very-long-term terminal values, knowledge and accuracy of evaluation (epistemics) are far more important than almost anything else.
It may be that there’s a declining marginal value for knowledge, as there is for most resources, and once you know enough to confidently make the tradeoffs, you should do so. But if you’re uncertain, go for the knowledge.