OK I think I see where you’re coming from—but I do think the unimaginable bigness of the universe has more ‘irrelevance’ implications for a consequentialist view which tries to consider valuable states of the universe than for a virtue approach which considers valuable states of yourself. Also if you think the implication of physics is that everything is irrelevant, that seems like an important implication in it’s own right, and different from ‘normality’ (the normal way most people think about ethics, which assumes that some things actually are relevant).
Note that the argument whether MWI changes anything is very different from the argument about what matters and why. I think it doesn’t change anything, independently of how much what things in-universe matter.
Separately, I tend to think “mattering is local”. I don’t argue as strongly for this, because it’s (recursively) a more personal intuition, less supported by type-2 thinking.
OK but your original comment reads like you’re offering things not mattering cosmically as a reason for thinking MWI doesn’t change anything (if that’s not a reason, then you haven’t given any reason, you’ve just stated your view). And I think that’s a good argument—if you have general reasons that are independent of specific physics to think nothing matters (cosmically), then it will follow that nothing matters in MWI as well. I was responding to that argument.
OK I think I see where you’re coming from—but I do think the unimaginable bigness of the universe has more ‘irrelevance’ implications for a consequentialist view which tries to consider valuable states of the universe than for a virtue approach which considers valuable states of yourself. Also if you think the implication of physics is that everything is irrelevant, that seems like an important implication in it’s own right, and different from ‘normality’ (the normal way most people think about ethics, which assumes that some things actually are relevant).
Note that the argument whether MWI changes anything is very different from the argument about what matters and why. I think it doesn’t change anything, independently of how much what things in-universe matter.
Separately, I tend to think “mattering is local”. I don’t argue as strongly for this, because it’s (recursively) a more personal intuition, less supported by type-2 thinking.
OK but your original comment reads like you’re offering things not mattering cosmically as a reason for thinking MWI doesn’t change anything (if that’s not a reason, then you haven’t given any reason, you’ve just stated your view). And I think that’s a good argument—if you have general reasons that are independent of specific physics to think nothing matters (cosmically), then it will follow that nothing matters in MWI as well. I was responding to that argument.