I upvote for bringing the useful terminology for that case to the attention that I wasn’t aware of.
Then, too much “true/false”, too much “should” in what is suggested imho.
In reality, if I, say, choose not to drink the potion, I might still be quite utilitarian in usual decisions, it’s just that I don’t have the guts or so, or at this very moment I simply have a bit too little empathy with the trillion years of happiness for my future self, so it doesn’t match up with my dreading the almost sure death. All this without implying that I really think we ought to discount these trillion years. I just am an imperfect altruist with my future self; I have fear of dying even if it’s an imminent death, etc. So it’s just a basic preference to reject it, not a grand non-utilitarian theory implied by it. I might in fact even prescribe that potion to others in some situations, but still not like to drink it myself.
So, I think it does NOT follow that I’d have to believe “what happens on faraway exoplanets or what happened thousands of years ago in history could influence what we ought to do here and now”, at least not just from rejecting this particular potion.
I upvote for bringing the useful terminology for that case to the attention that I wasn’t aware of.
Then, too much “true/false”, too much “should” in what is suggested imho.
In reality, if I, say, choose not to drink the potion, I might still be quite utilitarian in usual decisions, it’s just that I don’t have the guts or so, or at this very moment I simply have a bit too little empathy with the trillion years of happiness for my future self, so it doesn’t match up with my dreading the almost sure death. All this without implying that I really think we ought to discount these trillion years. I just am an imperfect altruist with my future self; I have fear of dying even if it’s an imminent death, etc. So it’s just a basic preference to reject it, not a grand non-utilitarian theory implied by it. I might in fact even prescribe that potion to others in some situations, but still not like to drink it myself.
So, I think it does NOT follow that I’d have to believe “what happens on faraway exoplanets or what happened thousands of years ago in history could influence what we ought to do here and now”, at least not just from rejecting this particular potion.