A lot of humans care (or at least signal that they care in far-mode) about what happens in the future. That doesn’t make it sane or reasonable.
Why does it matter to anyone today whether the beings inhabiting Earth’s solar system in 20 centuries are descended from apes, or made of silicon, or came from elsewhere?
I think we can all agree that an entity’s anticipated future experiences matter to that entity. I hope (but would be interested to learn otherwise) that imaginary events such as fiction don’t matter. In between, there is a hugely wide range of how much it’s worth caring about distant events.
I’d argue that outside your light-cone is pretty close to imaginary in terms of care level. I’d also argue that events after your death are pretty unlikely to effect you (modulo basilisk-like punishment or reward).
I actually buy the idea that you care about (and are willing to expend resources on) subjunctive realities on behalf of not-quite-real other people. You get present value from imagining good outcomes for imagined-possible people even if they’re not you. This has to get weaker as it gets more distant in time and more tenuous in connection to reality, though.
But that’s not even the point I meant to make. Even if you care deeply about the far future for some reason, why is it reasonable to prefer weak, backward, stupid entities over more intelligent and advanced ones? Just because they’re made of similar meat-substance as you seems a bit parochial, and hypocritical given the way you treat slightly less-capable organic beings like lettuce.
Woodchopper’s post indicated that he’d violently interfere with (indirectly via criminalization) activities that make it infinitesimally more likely to be identified and located by ETs. This is well beyond reason, even if I overstated my long-term lack of care.
You have failed to answer my question. Why does anything at all matter? Why does anything care about anything at all? Why don’t I want my dog to die? Obviously, when I’m actually dead, I won’t want anything at all. But there is no reason I cannot have preferences now regarding events that will occur after I am dead. And I do.
A lot of humans care (or at least signal that they care in far-mode) about what happens in the future. That doesn’t make it sane or reasonable.
Why does it matter to anyone today whether the beings inhabiting Earth’s solar system in 20 centuries are descended from apes, or made of silicon, or came from elsewhere?
Why does anything at all matter?
I think we can all agree that an entity’s anticipated future experiences matter to that entity. I hope (but would be interested to learn otherwise) that imaginary events such as fiction don’t matter. In between, there is a hugely wide range of how much it’s worth caring about distant events.
I’d argue that outside your light-cone is pretty close to imaginary in terms of care level. I’d also argue that events after your death are pretty unlikely to effect you (modulo basilisk-like punishment or reward).
I actually buy the idea that you care about (and are willing to expend resources on) subjunctive realities on behalf of not-quite-real other people. You get present value from imagining good outcomes for imagined-possible people even if they’re not you. This has to get weaker as it gets more distant in time and more tenuous in connection to reality, though.
But that’s not even the point I meant to make. Even if you care deeply about the far future for some reason, why is it reasonable to prefer weak, backward, stupid entities over more intelligent and advanced ones? Just because they’re made of similar meat-substance as you seems a bit parochial, and hypocritical given the way you treat slightly less-capable organic beings like lettuce.
Woodchopper’s post indicated that he’d violently interfere with (indirectly via criminalization) activities that make it infinitesimally more likely to be identified and located by ETs. This is well beyond reason, even if I overstated my long-term lack of care.
You have failed to answer my question. Why does anything at all matter? Why does anything care about anything at all? Why don’t I want my dog to die? Obviously, when I’m actually dead, I won’t want anything at all. But there is no reason I cannot have preferences now regarding events that will occur after I am dead. And I do.
So it’s just après nous le déluge?