I’m sorry you feel that way but, to be honest, I don’t repent of my statement. I simply can’t imagine why the ultimate fate of an (at that point uninhabited) cosmos should matter to a puny hoo-man (except intellectually). It’s like a mayfly worrying about the Andromeda galaxy colliding with the Milky Way.
I think the confusion here is similar to the fear of being dead (not fear of dying). You sort of imagine how horrible it’ll be to be a corpse, just sitting around in a grave. But there will be no one there to experience how bad being dead is, and when the universe peters out in the end, no one will be there to be disappointed. If you care emotionally about entropic heat death, you should logically also feel bad every time an ice cube melts.
I care about what to measure (utility function) as much as I care about when to measure it (time function). For any measure, there’s a way to maximize it, and I’d like to see whatever measure humans decide is appropriate to be maximized across as much time as possible. So worrying about far future events is important insofar as I’d like my values to be maximized even then.
As for worrying about ice cubes, you’re right, it would be inconsistent of me to say otherwise, so I will say that I do. However, I apply a weighted scale of care, and our future galactic empire tends to weigh pretty heavily when compared with something like that.
ETA: Care about ice cube loss is so small I can’t feel it. Dealing with entropy / resource consumption, my caring gets large enough I can start feeling it around the point of owning and operating large home appliances, automobiles, etc., and ramps up drastically for things like inefficient power plants, creating new humans, and war.
I’m sorry you feel that way but, to be honest, I don’t repent of my statement. I simply can’t imagine why the ultimate fate of an (at that point uninhabited) cosmos should matter to a puny hoo-man (except intellectually). It’s like a mayfly worrying about the Andromeda galaxy colliding with the Milky Way.
I think the confusion here is similar to the fear of being dead (not fear of dying). You sort of imagine how horrible it’ll be to be a corpse, just sitting around in a grave. But there will be no one there to experience how bad being dead is, and when the universe peters out in the end, no one will be there to be disappointed. If you care emotionally about entropic heat death, you should logically also feel bad every time an ice cube melts.
I care about what to measure (utility function) as much as I care about when to measure it (time function). For any measure, there’s a way to maximize it, and I’d like to see whatever measure humans decide is appropriate to be maximized across as much time as possible. So worrying about far future events is important insofar as I’d like my values to be maximized even then.
As for worrying about ice cubes, you’re right, it would be inconsistent of me to say otherwise, so I will say that I do. However, I apply a weighted scale of care, and our future galactic empire tends to weigh pretty heavily when compared with something like that.
ETA: Care about ice cube loss is so small I can’t feel it. Dealing with entropy / resource consumption, my caring gets large enough I can start feeling it around the point of owning and operating large home appliances, automobiles, etc., and ramps up drastically for things like inefficient power plants, creating new humans, and war.