Living as a subsistence farmer is less desirable than your current lifestyle, but not as much undesirable that you would wish to kill yourself.
There is a lot of room between the two. It might be worth specifying something more concrete along the EY’s proposal of “lives barely worth celebrating”.
Or maybe specify what is the number p such that I’d be indifferent between becoming a subsistence farmer with probability 1 and killing myself with probability p.
In Java, the default heap is 128 megabytes, or 1073741824 bits. If you assume that half the heap will have a 1 instead of a zero, ie. a pebble as opposed to no pebble, I would say that around 536870912 pebbles form a heap.
I think the difference between “Lives worth living” and “Lives worth celebrating” is basically a difference between “I opt to not mercy-kill this person.” and “I opt to bring this person into existence”—the precise levels of happiness/utility required are of course subjective, but the latter is generally considered to be higher than the former...
The main reason I don’t kill miserable people in the real world (other than ethical injunctions) is that it would sadden/have negative externalities on other people. ISTM that certain thoughts experiments yield preposterous results as a result of neglecting this.
The question asks if you opt to bring 99,999 people into existence. Adding the assmption that it is worth to bring those people into existence would beg the question.
Yeah, my formulation of this was a bit clumsy. Perhaps instead of a1) “I opt to not mercy-kill this person.” and b1) “I opt to bring this person into existence” we could have a2) “I prefer it that this person continues living.” and b2) “I prefer that this person existed in the first place from the counterfactual in which they never existed.”
This detaches slightly the decision (the verb “opt”) from the statement-of-preferences.
Also even with the earlier formulation, there are I guess, nitpicks which can be made: bringing the same person in existence 99,999 times may not be valued in the same way that bringing 99,999 different persons into existence would.
There is a lot of room between the two. It might be worth specifying something more concrete along the EY’s proposal of “lives barely worth celebrating”.
Or maybe specify what is the number p such that I’d be indifferent between becoming a subsistence farmer with probability 1 and killing myself with probability p.
How many pebbles form a heap?
In Java, the default heap is 128 megabytes, or 1073741824 bits. If you assume that half the heap will have a 1 instead of a zero, ie. a pebble as opposed to no pebble, I would say that around 536870912 pebbles form a heap.
“Lives barely worth celebrating” doesn’t sound very concrete to me. Do you have a better proposal?
I think the difference between “Lives worth living” and “Lives worth celebrating” is basically a difference between “I opt to not mercy-kill this person.” and “I opt to bring this person into existence”—the precise levels of happiness/utility required are of course subjective, but the latter is generally considered to be higher than the former...
The main reason I don’t kill miserable people in the real world (other than ethical injunctions) is that it would sadden/have negative externalities on other people. ISTM that certain thoughts experiments yield preposterous results as a result of neglecting this.
The question asks if you opt to bring 99,999 people into existence. Adding the assmption that it is worth to bring those people into existence would beg the question.
Yeah, my formulation of this was a bit clumsy. Perhaps instead of
a1) “I opt to not mercy-kill this person.” and
b1) “I opt to bring this person into existence”
we could have
a2) “I prefer it that this person continues living.” and
b2) “I prefer that this person existed in the first place from the counterfactual in which they never existed.”
This detaches slightly the decision (the verb “opt”) from the statement-of-preferences.
Also even with the earlier formulation, there are I guess, nitpicks which can be made: bringing the same person in existence 99,999 times may not be valued in the same way that bringing 99,999 different persons into existence would.
No, as you’d also be taking your current life as a person-better-off-than-a-subsistence-farmer out of existence.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/08/no-theory-x-in-shining-armour.html#comment-614620591