Seems unlikely to me. I mean, I think, in large part due to factory farming, that the current immediate existence of humanity, and also its history, are net negatives. The reason I’m not a full blown antinatalist is because these issues are likely to be remedied in the future, and the goodness of the future will astronomically dwarf the current negativity humanity has and is bringing about. (assuming we survive and realize a non-negligible fraction of our cosmic endowment)
The reason I think this is, well, the way I view it, its an immediate corollary of the standard yudkowsky/bostrom AI arguments. Animals existing and suffering is an extremely specific state of affairs, just like humans existing and being happy is an extremely specific state of affairs. This means that, if you optimize hard enough for anything, thats not exactly that (humans happy or animals suffering), you’re not gonna get it.
And, maybe this is me being too optimistic (but I really hope not, and I really don’t think so), but I don’t think many humans want animals to suffer for its own sake. They’d eat lab-grown meat if it was cheaper and better tasting than animal-grown meat. Lab-grown meat is a good example of the general principle I’m talking about. Suffering of sentient minds is a complex thing. If you have a powerful optimizer, about its way optimizing the universe, you’re virtually never gonna get suffering sentient minds unless that is what the optimizer is deliberately aiming for.
People seem to disagree with this comment. There’s two statements and one argument in it
Humanity’s current and historical existence are net-negatives.
The future, assuming humans survive, will have massive positive utility
The argument for why this is the case, based on something something optimization
What are people disagreeing with? Is it mostly the former? I think the latter is rather clear. I’m very confident it is true. Both the argument and the conclusion. The former, I’m quite confident is true as well (~90% ish?), but only for my set of values.
Seems unlikely to me. I mean, I think, in large part due to factory farming, that the current immediate existence of humanity, and also its history, are net negatives. The reason I’m not a full blown antinatalist is because these issues are likely to be remedied in the future, and the goodness of the future will astronomically dwarf the current negativity humanity has and is bringing about. (assuming we survive and realize a non-negligible fraction of our cosmic endowment)
The reason I think this is, well, the way I view it, its an immediate corollary of the standard yudkowsky/bostrom AI arguments. Animals existing and suffering is an extremely specific state of affairs, just like humans existing and being happy is an extremely specific state of affairs. This means that, if you optimize hard enough for anything, thats not exactly that (humans happy or animals suffering), you’re not gonna get it.
And, maybe this is me being too optimistic (but I really hope not, and I really don’t think so), but I don’t think many humans want animals to suffer for its own sake. They’d eat lab-grown meat if it was cheaper and better tasting than animal-grown meat. Lab-grown meat is a good example of the general principle I’m talking about. Suffering of sentient minds is a complex thing. If you have a powerful optimizer, about its way optimizing the universe, you’re virtually never gonna get suffering sentient minds unless that is what the optimizer is deliberately aiming for.
People seem to disagree with this comment. There’s two statements and one argument in it
Humanity’s current and historical existence are net-negatives.
The future, assuming humans survive, will have massive positive utility
The argument for why this is the case, based on something something optimization
What are people disagreeing with? Is it mostly the former? I think the latter is rather clear. I’m very confident it is true. Both the argument and the conclusion. The former, I’m quite confident is true as well (~90% ish?), but only for my set of values.