I do think reducing x-risk is extremely important. I agree with Carl, Nancy, Roko, etc. that cryonics tends to reduce x-risk. To reduce x-risk you need people to think about it in the first place, and cryonicists are more likely to do so because it is a direct threat to their lives.
Cryonics confronts a much more concrete and well-known phenomenon than x-risk. We all know about human death, it has happened billions of times already. Humanity has never yet been wiped out by anything (in our world at least). If you want people to start thinking rationally about the future, it seems backwards to start with something less well-understood and more nebulous. Start with a concrete problem like age-related death; most people can understand that.
As to the moral worth of people not yet born, I do consider that lower than people already in existence by far because the probability of them existing as specific individuals is not set in stone yet. I don’t think contraception is a crime, for example.
The continuation of the human race does have extremely high moral utility but it is not for the same sort of reason that preventing b/millions of deaths does. If a few dozen breeding humans of both genders and high genetic variation are kept in existence (with a record of our technology and culture), and the rest of us die in an asteroid collision or some such, it’s not a heck of a lot worse than what happens if we just let everyone die of old age. (Well, it is the difference between a young death and an old death, which is significant. But not orders of magnitude more significant.)
I have bookmarked your comment and will reflect on it.
BTW I share your way of valuing things as expressed in your final 2 grafs: my previous comment used the language of utilitarianism only because I expected that that would be the most common ethical orientation among my audience and did not wish to distract readers with my personal way of valuing things.
I do think reducing x-risk is extremely important. I agree with Carl, Nancy, Roko, etc. that cryonics tends to reduce x-risk. To reduce x-risk you need people to think about it in the first place, and cryonicists are more likely to do so because it is a direct threat to their lives.
Cryonics confronts a much more concrete and well-known phenomenon than x-risk. We all know about human death, it has happened billions of times already. Humanity has never yet been wiped out by anything (in our world at least). If you want people to start thinking rationally about the future, it seems backwards to start with something less well-understood and more nebulous. Start with a concrete problem like age-related death; most people can understand that.
As to the moral worth of people not yet born, I do consider that lower than people already in existence by far because the probability of them existing as specific individuals is not set in stone yet. I don’t think contraception is a crime, for example.
The continuation of the human race does have extremely high moral utility but it is not for the same sort of reason that preventing b/millions of deaths does. If a few dozen breeding humans of both genders and high genetic variation are kept in existence (with a record of our technology and culture), and the rest of us die in an asteroid collision or some such, it’s not a heck of a lot worse than what happens if we just let everyone die of old age. (Well, it is the difference between a young death and an old death, which is significant. But not orders of magnitude more significant.)
I have bookmarked your comment and will reflect on it.
BTW I share your way of valuing things as expressed in your final 2 grafs: my previous comment used the language of utilitarianism only because I expected that that would be the most common ethical orientation among my audience and did not wish to distract readers with my personal way of valuing things.