Existing people take priority over theoretical people. Infinitely so. This should be obvious, as the reverse conclusion ends up with utter absurdities of the “Every sperm is sacred” variety.
Mad grin
Once a child is born, it has as much claim on our consideration as every other person in our light cone, but there is no obligation to have children. Not any specific child, nor any at all. Reject this axiom and you might as well commit suicide over the guilt of the billions of potentials children you could have that are never going to be born. Right now.
Even if you stay pregnant till you die/never masturbate, this would effectively not help at all—each conception moves one potential from the space of “could be” to to the space of “is”, but at the same time eliminates at least several hundred million other potential children from the possibility space—that is just how human reproduction works.
Existing people take priority over theoretical people. Infinitely so.
Does this mean that I am free to build a doomsday weapon that kills everyone born after September 4th 2013 100 years from now, if that gets me a cookie?
This should be obvious, as the reverse conclusion ends up with utter absurdities of the “Every sperm is sacred” variety.
Not necessarily. It would merely be your obligation to have as many children as possible, while still ensuring that they are healthy and well cared for. At some point having an extra child will make all your children less well of.
Once a child is born, it has as much claim on our consideration as every other person in our light cone
Why is there a threshold at birth? I agree that it is a convenient point, but it is arbitrary.
Reject this axiom and you might as well commit suicide over the guilt of the billions of potentials children you could have that are never going to be born.
Why should I commit suicide? That reduces the number of people. It would be much better to start having children. (Note that I am not saying that this is my utility function).
The “infinitely so” part seems wrong, but the idea is that 4D histories which include a sentient being coming into existence, and then dying, are dispreferred to 4D world-histories in which that sentient being continues. Since the latter type of such histories may not be available, we specify that continuing for a billion years and then halting is greatly preferable to continuing for 10 years then halting. Our degree of preference for such is substantially greater than the degree to which we feel morally obligated to create more people, especially people who shall themselves be doomed to short lives.
The switch from consquentialist language (“4D histories which include… are dispreferred”) to deontological language (“…the degree to which we feel morally obligated to create more people”) is confusing. I agree that saving the lives of existing people is a stronger moral imperative than creating new ones, at the level of deontological rules and virtuous conduct which is a large part of everyday human moral reasoning. I am much less clear than when evaluating 4D histories I assign higher utility to one with few people living long lives than to one with more people living shorter lives. Actually, I tend towards the opposite intuition preferring a world with more people who live less (as long as the their lives are still well worth living, etc.)
Not sure what part of this comment tree this belongs so just posting it here where it’s likely to be seen:
It struck me with an image that it’s not at all necessary that these tradeoffs are actually a thing once you dissolve the “person” abstraction; it’s possible that something like the following is optimal: half the universe is dedicated to search the space of all experiences in order starting with the highest utility/most meaningful/lowest hanging fruit. This is then aggregated and metadata added and sent to the other half which is tiled with minimal context-experiencing units equivalent to individual peoples subjective whatever. in the end, you end up with equivalent to if you had half the number of individual people as if that was your only priority, each having the utility as a single person with the entire future history of half the universe dedicated to it, including context of history.
Thats the best case scenario. It’s pretty certain SOME aspect or another of the fragile godshatter will disallow it obviously.
Existing people take priority over theoretical people. Infinitely so. This should be obvious, as the reverse conclusion ends up with utter absurdities of the “Every sperm is sacred” variety.
Mad grin
Once a child is born, it has as much claim on our consideration as every other person in our light cone, but there is no obligation to have children. Not any specific child, nor any at all. Reject this axiom and you might as well commit suicide over the guilt of the billions of potentials children you could have that are never going to be born. Right now.
Even if you stay pregnant till you die/never masturbate, this would effectively not help at all—each conception moves one potential from the space of “could be” to to the space of “is”, but at the same time eliminates at least several hundred million other potential children from the possibility space—that is just how human reproduction works.
TL:DR; yes, yes they are. It is a silly question.
Does this mean that I am free to build a doomsday weapon that kills everyone born after September 4th 2013 100 years from now, if that gets me a cookie?
Not necessarily. It would merely be your obligation to have as many children as possible, while still ensuring that they are healthy and well cared for. At some point having an extra child will make all your children less well of.
Why is there a threshold at birth? I agree that it is a convenient point, but it is arbitrary.
Why should I commit suicide? That reduces the number of people. It would be much better to start having children. (Note that I am not saying that this is my utility function).
The “infinitely so” part seems wrong, but the idea is that 4D histories which include a sentient being coming into existence, and then dying, are dispreferred to 4D world-histories in which that sentient being continues. Since the latter type of such histories may not be available, we specify that continuing for a billion years and then halting is greatly preferable to continuing for 10 years then halting. Our degree of preference for such is substantially greater than the degree to which we feel morally obligated to create more people, especially people who shall themselves be doomed to short lives.
The switch from consquentialist language (“4D histories which include… are dispreferred”) to deontological language (“…the degree to which we feel morally obligated to create more people”) is confusing. I agree that saving the lives of existing people is a stronger moral imperative than creating new ones, at the level of deontological rules and virtuous conduct which is a large part of everyday human moral reasoning. I am much less clear than when evaluating 4D histories I assign higher utility to one with few people living long lives than to one with more people living shorter lives. Actually, I tend towards the opposite intuition preferring a world with more people who live less (as long as the their lives are still well worth living, etc.)
Not sure what part of this comment tree this belongs so just posting it here where it’s likely to be seen:
It struck me with an image that it’s not at all necessary that these tradeoffs are actually a thing once you dissolve the “person” abstraction; it’s possible that something like the following is optimal: half the universe is dedicated to search the space of all experiences in order starting with the highest utility/most meaningful/lowest hanging fruit. This is then aggregated and metadata added and sent to the other half which is tiled with minimal context-experiencing units equivalent to individual peoples subjective whatever. in the end, you end up with equivalent to if you had half the number of individual people as if that was your only priority, each having the utility as a single person with the entire future history of half the universe dedicated to it, including context of history.
Thats the best case scenario. It’s pretty certain SOME aspect or another of the fragile godshatter will disallow it obviously.
Yea, this was basically pseud tangential musings.