Robin, I think I’m being consistent in caring about lifespan, standard of living, and diversity while not caring about population. (Diversity will look like concern for population but it will run into diminishing returns; still, if our Earth were the only civilization, then indeed there would be lots of experiences as-yet unrealized and the diversity motive would be strong. In other words, I’d consistently want a hundred times as much diversity as what we see in the immediate world around us.)
Suppose that instead of talking about people, we were just talking about music or theorems.
It seems to me that a lot of what I have to say on this subject carries right over—that if there’s very little music or math already, then we are concerned about creating more of it so that experiences don’t go unrealized. But if the space is already well-covered up to the granularity at which we care about diversity (which is less than tiny variations in note length) then we are more interested in hearing the best music, and less interested in hearing new music.
Robin, I think I’m being consistent in caring about lifespan, standard of living, and diversity while not caring about population. (Diversity will look like concern for population but it will run into diminishing returns; still, if our Earth were the only civilization, then indeed there would be lots of experiences as-yet unrealized and the diversity motive would be strong. In other words, I’d consistently want a hundred times as much diversity as what we see in the immediate world around us.)
Suppose that instead of talking about people, we were just talking about music or theorems.
It seems to me that a lot of what I have to say on this subject carries right over—that if there’s very little music or math already, then we are concerned about creating more of it so that experiences don’t go unrealized. But if the space is already well-covered up to the granularity at which we care about diversity (which is less than tiny variations in note length) then we are more interested in hearing the best music, and less interested in hearing new music.