It depends. As for universes, so too for individual human beings: Is it moral (in a vacuum — we’re assuming there aren’t indirect harmful consequences) to kill a single individual, provided you replace him a second later with a near-perfect copy? That depends. Could you have made the clone without killing the original? If an individual’s life is good, and you can create a copy of him that will also have a good life, without interfering with the original, then that act of copying may be ethically warranted, and killing either copy may be immoral.
Similarly, if you can make a copy of the whole universe without destroying the original, then, plausibly, it’s just as wicked to destroy the old universe as it would be to destroy it without making a copy. You’re subtracting the same amount of net utility. Of course, this is all assuming that the universe as a whole has positive value.
Regarding universes, there’s a discussion of this in Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch novel, where future people debate traveling back in time to change the present, realizing that that means basically the elimination of every person presently exisiting.
Regarding individuals, I once wrote a short story about a scientist who placed his mind into the body of a clone of himself, via a destructive process (scanned his original brain synapse by synapse after slicing it up, recreated that in the clone via electro stimulation). He was tried for murder of the clone. I hadn’t seen the connection between the two stories until now, though.
We are talking about time travel and so this doesn’t apply. Your comment is nitpicky for no good reason. I obviously recognize that consequentialists believe that more lives are better; I don’t know why you felt an urge to tell me that. Your wording is also unnecessarily pedantic and inefficient.
Sure. Again, this isn’t relevant and isn’t providing information that’s new to me. People like Schopenhauer and Benatar might exist, but surely my overall point still stands. The focus on nitpicking is excessive and frustrating. I don’t want to have to invest much time and effort into my comments on this site so that I can avoid allowing people to get distracted by side issues; I want to get my points across as efficiently as possible and without interruption.
I was thinking more of average utilitarians than antinatalists. (I provisionally agree with average utilitarianism, and think more lives are better instrumentally but not terminally. I’m not confident that I wouldn’t change my mind if I thought this stuff through, though.)
It depends. As for universes, so too for individual human beings: Is it moral (in a vacuum — we’re assuming there aren’t indirect harmful consequences) to kill a single individual, provided you replace him a second later with a near-perfect copy? That depends. Could you have made the clone without killing the original? If an individual’s life is good, and you can create a copy of him that will also have a good life, without interfering with the original, then that act of copying may be ethically warranted, and killing either copy may be immoral.
Similarly, if you can make a copy of the whole universe without destroying the original, then, plausibly, it’s just as wicked to destroy the old universe as it would be to destroy it without making a copy. You’re subtracting the same amount of net utility. Of course, this is all assuming that the universe as a whole has positive value.
Regarding universes, there’s a discussion of this in Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch novel, where future people debate traveling back in time to change the present, realizing that that means basically the elimination of every person presently exisiting.
Regarding individuals, I once wrote a short story about a scientist who placed his mind into the body of a clone of himself, via a destructive process (scanned his original brain synapse by synapse after slicing it up, recreated that in the clone via electro stimulation). He was tried for murder of the clone. I hadn’t seen the connection between the two stories until now, though.
We are talking about time travel and so this doesn’t apply. Your comment is nitpicky for no good reason. I obviously recognize that consequentialists believe that more lives are better; I don’t know why you felt an urge to tell me that. Your wording is also unnecessarily pedantic and inefficient.
Not all of them.
Sure. Again, this isn’t relevant and isn’t providing information that’s new to me. People like Schopenhauer and Benatar might exist, but surely my overall point still stands. The focus on nitpicking is excessive and frustrating. I don’t want to have to invest much time and effort into my comments on this site so that I can avoid allowing people to get distracted by side issues; I want to get my points across as efficiently as possible and without interruption.
I was thinking more of average utilitarians than antinatalists. (I provisionally agree with average utilitarianism, and think more lives are better instrumentally but not terminally. I’m not confident that I wouldn’t change my mind if I thought this stuff through, though.)