I guess this more comes into coming to terms with my own mortality. A full appreciation of your own brevity and insignificance is a bit of a shock to your system (I’m reminded of Douglas Adams’s total perspective vortex), and as a pair they feel like such game-changing ideas that they should have a significant effect on my thinking. It feels like a change of such enormity that something is wrong if it doesn’t result in a lot of rethinking, hence my coming here to discuss the implications when I realised I was just carrying on as before.
As for animal rights I am inclined to agree and not place a high priorirty on preserving species (you’ll be able to clone another before long, right?), but I never really thought out the reasons why before (probably the cynical reason that I can get more out of preserving humans so I put a low price on other causes). Since I never had a clear idea why being less empathic towards animals was okay it felt like the revelation I’m not so different should make reconsider the issue. Again, my concern is it hasn’t, that I’m not updating myself.
I think you should account for it in figuring out the best course for the future; Robin Hanson’s argument that choosing not to have children could compress decision space in the far future resulted in me concluding that the long-term implications of choosing not to have children may be a bad thing, absent radical changes I do not feel safe including in my predictions.
However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it should change your ethical system as a whole, unless your ethical system is dependent upon the mechanisms by which you came into being. Your consideration space is finite, so at some point it’s necessary to limit what you put into it.
I guess this more comes into coming to terms with my own mortality. A full appreciation of your own brevity and insignificance is a bit of a shock to your system (I’m reminded of Douglas Adams’s total perspective vortex), and as a pair they feel like such game-changing ideas that they should have a significant effect on my thinking. It feels like a change of such enormity that something is wrong if it doesn’t result in a lot of rethinking, hence my coming here to discuss the implications when I realised I was just carrying on as before.
As for animal rights I am inclined to agree and not place a high priorirty on preserving species (you’ll be able to clone another before long, right?), but I never really thought out the reasons why before (probably the cynical reason that I can get more out of preserving humans so I put a low price on other causes). Since I never had a clear idea why being less empathic towards animals was okay it felt like the revelation I’m not so different should make reconsider the issue. Again, my concern is it hasn’t, that I’m not updating myself.
I think you should account for it in figuring out the best course for the future; Robin Hanson’s argument that choosing not to have children could compress decision space in the far future resulted in me concluding that the long-term implications of choosing not to have children may be a bad thing, absent radical changes I do not feel safe including in my predictions.
However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it should change your ethical system as a whole, unless your ethical system is dependent upon the mechanisms by which you came into being. Your consideration space is finite, so at some point it’s necessary to limit what you put into it.