If you don’t think killing is in itself bad then you are not on par with the intuition of almost everybody. Legit.
I personally would rather to have never been born but don’t want to commit suicide. There are numerous reasons. Hurting the people who care about me (and wouldn’t have if I was not born in the first place), fearing pain or the act of suicide itself, fearing death (both are emotional axioms that a lot of people have, there’s no point in debating them rationally) and many other.
To be clear, I didn’t say anything about killing. I said “replace”. This isn’t possible with humans, but picture the emulation world, where an entity can be erased with no warning or sensation, and a fully-developed one can be created at will. Even then, practically it would be impermissible to do a same-value replacement, both due to uncertainty and for negative effects on other lives.
In the human world, OF COURSE killing (and more generally, dieing) is bad. My point is that the badness is fully encoded in the reduction in h of the victim, and the reduced levels of h of those who survive the victim. It doesn’t need to be double-counted with another term.
I personally would rather to have never been born but don’t want to commit suicide.
I’m extremely saddened to know this. And it makes me feel mean to stick to my theme of “already included in h, no need for another term”. The fear of death, expectation of pain, and impact on others are _all_ differences in h which should not be double-counted.
Also, I very much hope that in a few years or decades, you’ll look back and realize you were mistaken in wishing you hadn’t been born, and are glad you persevered, and are overall glad you experienced life.
The “replace” in the original problem is ending one human and creating (in whatever way) another one. I don’t think you understand the scenario.
In total uti (in the human world), it is okay to:
kill someone, provided that by doing so you bring into the world another human with the same happiness. For the sake of argument, lets assume happiness potential is genetically encoded. So if you kill someone, you can always say “that’s ok guys, my wife just got pregnant with a fetus bearing the same genetic code as the guy I just murdered”. In a model where all you do is sum up the happiness of every individual in the population, this is ok. In Vannesa’s model it isn’t, and what makes sure it isn’t is the penalty.
″ I’m extremely saddened to know this. And it makes me feel mean to stick to my theme of “already included in h, no need for another term”. The fear of death, expectation of pain, and impact on others are _all_ differences in h which should not be double-counted.”
It might be double counted, that’s not what I was talking about when I said the model captures this intuition. The existence of h0 does that, it might be that other parts of the model do that as well (I don’t think so though). Also, I’m always up for an intelligent discussion and you were not being mean :)
″ Also, I very much hope that in a few years or decades, you’ll look back and realize you were mistaken in wishing you hadn’t been born, and are glad you persevered, and are overall glad you experienced life.”
My prior for this is low, since I’ve been feeling this way for my entire adult life, but one can always hope. Plus, I’ve actually met and talked to many like minded individuals so I wouldn’t discount this intuition as “not worth capturing since its just some small anomaly”.
I just want to note here for readers that the following isn’t correct (but you’ve already made a clarifying comment, so I realise you know this):
In total uti (in the human world), it is okay to:
kill someone, provided that by doing so you bring into the world another human with the same happiness.
Total uti only says this is ok if you leave everything else equal (in terms of total utility). In almost all natural situations you don’t: killing someone influences the happiness of others too, generally negatively.
If you don’t think killing is in itself bad then you are not on par with the intuition of almost everybody. Legit.
I personally would rather to have never been born but don’t want to commit suicide. There are numerous reasons. Hurting the people who care about me (and wouldn’t have if I was not born in the first place), fearing pain or the act of suicide itself, fearing death (both are emotional axioms that a lot of people have, there’s no point in debating them rationally) and many other.
To be clear, I didn’t say anything about killing. I said “replace”. This isn’t possible with humans, but picture the emulation world, where an entity can be erased with no warning or sensation, and a fully-developed one can be created at will. Even then, practically it would be impermissible to do a same-value replacement, both due to uncertainty and for negative effects on other lives.
In the human world, OF COURSE killing (and more generally, dieing) is bad. My point is that the badness is fully encoded in the reduction in h of the victim, and the reduced levels of h of those who survive the victim. It doesn’t need to be double-counted with another term.
I’m extremely saddened to know this. And it makes me feel mean to stick to my theme of “already included in h, no need for another term”. The fear of death, expectation of pain, and impact on others are _all_ differences in h which should not be double-counted.
Also, I very much hope that in a few years or decades, you’ll look back and realize you were mistaken in wishing you hadn’t been born, and are glad you persevered, and are overall glad you experienced life.
The “replace” in the original problem is ending one human and creating (in whatever way) another one. I don’t think you understand the scenario.
In total uti (in the human world), it is okay to:
kill someone, provided that by doing so you bring into the world another human with the same happiness. For the sake of argument, lets assume happiness potential is genetically encoded. So if you kill someone, you can always say “that’s ok guys, my wife just got pregnant with a fetus bearing the same genetic code as the guy I just murdered”. In a model where all you do is sum up the happiness of every individual in the population, this is ok. In Vannesa’s model it isn’t, and what makes sure it isn’t is the penalty.
″ I’m extremely saddened to know this. And it makes me feel mean to stick to my theme of “already included in h, no need for another term”. The fear of death, expectation of pain, and impact on others are _all_ differences in h which should not be double-counted.”
It might be double counted, that’s not what I was talking about when I said the model captures this intuition. The existence of h0 does that, it might be that other parts of the model do that as well (I don’t think so though). Also, I’m always up for an intelligent discussion and you were not being mean :)
″ Also, I very much hope that in a few years or decades, you’ll look back and realize you were mistaken in wishing you hadn’t been born, and are glad you persevered, and are overall glad you experienced life.”
My prior for this is low, since I’ve been feeling this way for my entire adult life, but one can always hope. Plus, I’ve actually met and talked to many like minded individuals so I wouldn’t discount this intuition as “not worth capturing since its just some small anomaly”.
I just want to note here for readers that the following isn’t correct (but you’ve already made a clarifying comment, so I realise you know this):
Total uti only says this is ok if you leave everything else equal (in terms of total utility). In almost all natural situations you don’t: killing someone influences the happiness of others too, generally negatively.