that’s much better than the nothing that will befall those who would otherwise have been totally lost
I’m curious to know why you make this judgment. I imagine future people choosing between making a new person and making an as-similar-as-a-relative copy of a preserved person. In both cases, one additional person gets to exist. In both cases, that person is not somebody who has ever existed before. In neither case case does a future person get to revive a loved one, because the result will only be somebody similar to that loved one. Reviving the preserved person is better for the preserved person, I guess, but making a new person is better for the new person. Once you’ve lost continuity of identity, you’ve lost any reason why basing new people on recordings is better than making new people the old fashioned way.
Put another way, the nothing that will befall the totally lost feels exactly as bad to me as the nothing that will befall the future unborn whom they displace.
I know that ethical reasoning about potentially-existing people is hard, so I’m not too clear on this, so I’d like to know why you feel the way you do.
I’m curious to know why you make this judgment. I imagine future people choosing between making a new person and making an as-similar-as-a-relative copy of a preserved person. In both cases, one additional person gets to exist. In both cases, that person is not somebody who has ever existed before. In neither case case does a future person get to revive a loved one, because the result will only be somebody similar to that loved one. Reviving the preserved person is better for the preserved person, I guess, but making a new person is better for the new person. Once you’ve lost continuity of identity, you’ve lost any reason why basing new people on recordings is better than making new people the old fashioned way.
Put another way, the nothing that will befall the totally lost feels exactly as bad to me as the nothing that will befall the future unborn whom they displace.
I know that ethical reasoning about potentially-existing people is hard, so I’m not too clear on this, so I’d like to know why you feel the way you do.