Sorry, this may be a stupid question, but why is it a good for people to get cyonically frozen? Obviously if they don’t they won’t make it to the future—but other people will be born or duplicated in the future and the total number of people will be the same.
Why care more about people who live now than future potential people?
Why is it worse to die (and people cryonically frozen don’t avoid the pain of death anyway) than to never have been born? Assuming the process of dying isn’t painful, they seem the same to me.
Once a person exists, they can form preferences, including a preference not to die. These preferences have real weight. These preferences can also adjust, although not eliminate, the pain of death. If I were to die with a cryonics team standing over me ready to give me a chance at waking up again, I would be more emotionally comfortable than if I were to die on the expectation of ceasing to exist. Someone who does not exist yet does not have such preferences.
People do not all die at the same time. Although an impermanent death is, like a permanent one, also a loss to the living (of time together), it’s not the same magnitude of loss. Beyond a certain point, it doesn’t matter very much to most people to be able to create new people (not that they wouldn’t resent being disallowed).
It’s not clear that anyone’s birth will really be directly prevented by cryonics. (I mean, except in the sense that all events have some causal impact that influences, among other things, who jumps whose bones when, and therefore who has which children.) A society that would revive cryonics patients probably isn’t one that has a population problem such that the cryonics patients make a difference.
Agree with “myself”, disagree with “diversity of minds”. If the future needs diversity, it has its random number generators and person templates. Additional argument: death is bad, life-creation is not morally reversible.
I can understand valuing oneself more than others (simple selfishness is unsurprising), but I think Eliezer is saying cryonics is a positive good, not just that it benefits some people at the equal expense of others.
If uploading gets up as is probably required for people to be woken up, the future will be able to make minds as diverse as they like.
I think Eliezer is saying cryonics is a positive good
I don’t think so; when people say “shouldn’t you argue that people give the money to SIAI”, he says “why does this come out of our saving the world budget, and not your curry budget?”
I think this is a very weak point and the far future will probably be able to make whatever kinds of minds they like, but we could have scanning/WBE long before we know enough about minds to diversify them.
In addition to the very valid counterpoints listed here, I think its worth noting the false dichotomy of the question. If the initial assumption is that population is capped, that hasn’t been borne out yet, and assuming we eventually leave Earth in a sustainable-habitats manner, doesn’t have to ever hold true. If population-capping isn’t the basis for your statement, then I don’t see anything suggesting that the total number of people will be the same with and without cryonics.
We are not choosing between ourselves and future potential people—at the moment, we are simply choosing between possible-ourselves and definitely-not-ourselves existing in the future.
Sorry, this may be a stupid question, but why is it a good for people to get cyonically frozen? Obviously if they don’t they won’t make it to the future—but other people will be born or duplicated in the future and the total number of people will be the same.
Why care more about people who live now than future potential people?
Because we exist already, and they don’t. Our loss is death; theirs is birth control.
Why is it worse to die (and people cryonically frozen don’t avoid the pain of death anyway) than to never have been born? Assuming the process of dying isn’t painful, they seem the same to me.
Once a person exists, they can form preferences, including a preference not to die. These preferences have real weight. These preferences can also adjust, although not eliminate, the pain of death. If I were to die with a cryonics team standing over me ready to give me a chance at waking up again, I would be more emotionally comfortable than if I were to die on the expectation of ceasing to exist. Someone who does not exist yet does not have such preferences.
People do not all die at the same time. Although an impermanent death is, like a permanent one, also a loss to the living (of time together), it’s not the same magnitude of loss. Beyond a certain point, it doesn’t matter very much to most people to be able to create new people (not that they wouldn’t resent being disallowed).
It’s not clear that anyone’s birth will really be directly prevented by cryonics. (I mean, except in the sense that all events have some causal impact that influences, among other things, who jumps whose bones when, and therefore who has which children.) A society that would revive cryonics patients probably isn’t one that has a population problem such that the cryonics patients make a difference.
I care more about myself than future potential people.
More seriously, I value a diversity of minds, and if the future does too they may be glad to have us along.
Agree with “myself”, disagree with “diversity of minds”. If the future needs diversity, it has its random number generators and person templates. Additional argument: death is bad, life-creation is not morally reversible.
I don’t know why I said “more seriously” when it’s by far the less defensible argument.
I can understand valuing oneself more than others (simple selfishness is unsurprising), but I think Eliezer is saying cryonics is a positive good, not just that it benefits some people at the equal expense of others.
If uploading gets up as is probably required for people to be woken up, the future will be able to make minds as diverse as they like.
I don’t think so; when people say “shouldn’t you argue that people give the money to SIAI”, he says “why does this come out of our saving the world budget, and not your curry budget?”
I think this is a very weak point and the far future will probably be able to make whatever kinds of minds they like, but we could have scanning/WBE long before we know enough about minds to diversify them.
In addition to the very valid counterpoints listed here, I think its worth noting the false dichotomy of the question. If the initial assumption is that population is capped, that hasn’t been borne out yet, and assuming we eventually leave Earth in a sustainable-habitats manner, doesn’t have to ever hold true. If population-capping isn’t the basis for your statement, then I don’t see anything suggesting that the total number of people will be the same with and without cryonics.
We are not choosing between ourselves and future potential people—at the moment, we are simply choosing between possible-ourselves and definitely-not-ourselves existing in the future.