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.
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.