Imagining a state wherein all utilities are 0 is somewhat difficult for me… as I hold to a primarily egoistic morality, rather than a utilitarian one. Things primarily have utility in that they are useful to me, and that’s not a state of affairs that can be stripped from me by some moral argument.
The only circumstance that I can conceive of that could actually void my morality like that would be the combination of certain knowledge of my imminent demise, formed in such away as to deny any transhuman escape clause. Such a case might go something like, “You have incurable cancer and are certain to die in a month, with probability 1, and complications involved in that will prevent you from being preserved cryonically, so your destruction is certain to be absolute and permanent”… but that’s a rather unlikely and contrived state of affairs.
Even so, presented with such a situation, I can only perceive two possibilities. The first would be to rail against fate, spending the entirety of my limited time in a desperate quest to evade apparently certain destruction. If that failed… as it would, assuming the premises of the situation are true, then I’d eventually fall to the second; to turn to madness, and deliberately adopt some sort of irrational religious position to evade the knowledge of my certain destruction… as, irrespective of my current rational perspective, I don’t feel confident enough to stare absolute, permanent, and unavoidable Death in the face without flinching. That said… I’m not entirely certain if that would be particularly irrational. Given that I cannot, as a Bayesian, actually assign a probability of 0 to any idea, however absurd… than, if I knew I was going to die, and that there’d be no chance to avoid it through technology, than it would actually be rational to do some quick odds-finding against Pascal’s Wager, and pick a god that accepts a deathbed conversion. After all, it can’t be rational to simply accept utter destruction, if there’s any chance, however slight, of avoiding it. Even a thin reed is better then nothing.
Imagining a state wherein all utilities are 0 is somewhat difficult for me… as I hold to a primarily egoistic morality, rather than a utilitarian one. Things primarily have utility in that they are useful to me, and that’s not a state of affairs that can be stripped from me by some moral argument.
The only circumstance that I can conceive of that could actually void my morality like that would be the combination of certain knowledge of my imminent demise, formed in such away as to deny any transhuman escape clause. Such a case might go something like, “You have incurable cancer and are certain to die in a month, with probability 1, and complications involved in that will prevent you from being preserved cryonically, so your destruction is certain to be absolute and permanent”… but that’s a rather unlikely and contrived state of affairs.
Even so, presented with such a situation, I can only perceive two possibilities. The first would be to rail against fate, spending the entirety of my limited time in a desperate quest to evade apparently certain destruction. If that failed… as it would, assuming the premises of the situation are true, then I’d eventually fall to the second; to turn to madness, and deliberately adopt some sort of irrational religious position to evade the knowledge of my certain destruction… as, irrespective of my current rational perspective, I don’t feel confident enough to stare absolute, permanent, and unavoidable Death in the face without flinching. That said… I’m not entirely certain if that would be particularly irrational. Given that I cannot, as a Bayesian, actually assign a probability of 0 to any idea, however absurd… than, if I knew I was going to die, and that there’d be no chance to avoid it through technology, than it would actually be rational to do some quick odds-finding against Pascal’s Wager, and pick a god that accepts a deathbed conversion. After all, it can’t be rational to simply accept utter destruction, if there’s any chance, however slight, of avoiding it. Even a thin reed is better then nothing.