I pretty strongly disagree. Honoring past WISDOM seems good—learning from their pain and knowledge is hard to argue against. There may be past wishes which allow me to update my own preferences. But that doesn’t translate to respecting, agreeing with, or paying for any of their crazy specific demands.
I don’t even think I owe very much to many stated preferences of contemporary living humans, although I do try to respect and support my interpretation of those parts which I think encourage long-term satisfaction. For instance, I park my car in my garage, which frustrates those who’d like to cut out the catalytic converter.
This does mean I’ll try to commit future-me (and other future humans) to courses of action that I think are good for them. But it does not mean that those future people have a moral duty to agree with me.
I don’t even think I owe very much to many stated preferences of contemporary living humans
This feels like something of a crux? Definitely, before we get into respecting the preferences of the past, if we don’t agree on respecting the preferences of the present/near-future humans we may not find much to agree on.
I’m not even sure where to begin on this philosophical point—maybe something like universalizability, like “wouldn’t it be good if other contemporary living humans, who I might add outnumber you 7billion to 1, try to obey your own stated preferences?”
Indeed—this is very likely a crux. I’d enjoy it if other humans obeyed my stated preferences, but I think I’d lose respect for them as agents (and making very specific object-level requests would show my disrespect for them as moral targets).
Doing things that I project to improve overall quality of life for many people is good, IMO. Following arbitrary stated preferences is very rarely an effective way to do that. There are lots of cases where statements are a good hint to utility weightings, and lots of cases where the speaker is confused or misleading or time-inconsistent.
Dead people’s historical statements, always, are incorrect about what will improve their experienced universe.
I pretty strongly disagree. Honoring past WISDOM seems good—learning from their pain and knowledge is hard to argue against. There may be past wishes which allow me to update my own preferences. But that doesn’t translate to respecting, agreeing with, or paying for any of their crazy specific demands.
I don’t even think I owe very much to many stated preferences of contemporary living humans, although I do try to respect and support my interpretation of those parts which I think encourage long-term satisfaction. For instance, I park my car in my garage, which frustrates those who’d like to cut out the catalytic converter.
This does mean I’ll try to commit future-me (and other future humans) to courses of action that I think are good for them. But it does not mean that those future people have a moral duty to agree with me.
This feels like something of a crux? Definitely, before we get into respecting the preferences of the past, if we don’t agree on respecting the preferences of the present/near-future humans we may not find much to agree on.
I’m not even sure where to begin on this philosophical point—maybe something like universalizability, like “wouldn’t it be good if other contemporary living humans, who I might add outnumber you 7billion to 1, try to obey your own stated preferences?”
Indeed—this is very likely a crux. I’d enjoy it if other humans obeyed my stated preferences, but I think I’d lose respect for them as agents (and making very specific object-level requests would show my disrespect for them as moral targets).
Doing things that I project to improve overall quality of life for many people is good, IMO. Following arbitrary stated preferences is very rarely an effective way to do that. There are lots of cases where statements are a good hint to utility weightings, and lots of cases where the speaker is confused or misleading or time-inconsistent.
Dead people’s historical statements, always, are incorrect about what will improve their experienced universe.