“You shouldn’t kill because it’s the wrong thing to do” can be rescued as “Because then a person will transition from ‘alive’ to ‘dead’ in the future, and this is a bad event” or “Because the interval between Outcome A and Outcome B includes the interval from Fred alive to Fred dead.”
Why the fancy words? This just seems like a complicated way of saying: “Because the person would then be dead. And that is bad”.
People being dead is a bad outcome. Killing people is a bad action. Consequentialism does not recognize bad actions, only actions that lead to bad outcomes.
A human corpse poofing into existence from nowhere wouldn’t be in itself a bad outcome. So we need to specify that the human was once alive.
An alternate phrasing might be “Because this would cause the person to die.” But the word “die” is historically imprecise. Open-heart surgery stops a beating heart. Destructive uploading would cause brain death.
Does it have kuru? I’m only open to eating healthy human flesh in this scenario.
Also, if it poofs into existence from nowhere, is it creating matter out of nothing? It’s creating something that still has usable energy in it, out of nothing? That could not only end world hunger and veganism, you might be able to use the newly-created corpses for fuel in some kind of power plant. Sure, you might have to go back to steam power to make it work, and sure, human bodies might not be the optimal fuel source, but if you’re getting them from nowhere, that solves all our energy woes.
It also might make the planet gain mass, eventually, if you did enough of it for long enough. Hmm. Oh, well, you can use that to make spacecraft. Maybe. Or something.
That and blood pudding. And fertilizer.
I think actually, being able to poof human corpses into existence would be an improvement over the current state of affairs. It might still be sub-optimal, but it would be better.
Now I want to be able to poof human corpses into existence from nowhere. I also think maybe I should start a list of things I’ve said that I wouldn’t have been able to predict that I would say if asked the day before.
“the person would then be dead” seems to pretty clearly imply that there was a person involved. In the case where a corpse poofs into existence from nowhere, there doesn’t seem to have ever been a person involved. I conclude that “Because the person would then be dead” doesn’t apply to the case where a corpse poofs into existence from nowhere. So I’m not sure why we would need to further specify anything here.
All of that said, the whole approach of counting deaths as negative utility seems to me to be rescuing the wrong part of the original nonconsequentialist claim in the first place.
It’s clear that one consequence of increasing the human population from 1 billion people to 7 billion people is that many more people die per unit time, but it doesn’t follow from that fact that we should reject increasing human population on consequentialist grounds. (It might be true that we should so reject it, but even if true it doesn’t follow from that fact.)
It seems that the part we would want to rescue from a consequentialist POV is the idea that more life-years is good, so any act that reduces expected net lifeyears is bad… and also, perhaps, the idea that more life-years/person is good, so any act that reduces expected net lifeyears/person is bad.
This would also render all concerns about how we define “death” moot.
Why the fancy words? This just seems like a complicated way of saying: “Because the person would then be dead. And that is bad”.
People being dead is a bad outcome. Killing people is a bad action. Consequentialism does not recognize bad actions, only actions that lead to bad outcomes.
A human corpse poofing into existence from nowhere wouldn’t be in itself a bad outcome. So we need to specify that the human was once alive.
An alternate phrasing might be “Because this would cause the person to die.” But the word “die” is historically imprecise. Open-heart surgery stops a beating heart. Destructive uploading would cause brain death.
Free food! (It doesn’t count as cannibalism if the corpse has never been a member of your species!)
Does it have kuru? I’m only open to eating healthy human flesh in this scenario.
Also, if it poofs into existence from nowhere, is it creating matter out of nothing? It’s creating something that still has usable energy in it, out of nothing? That could not only end world hunger and veganism, you might be able to use the newly-created corpses for fuel in some kind of power plant. Sure, you might have to go back to steam power to make it work, and sure, human bodies might not be the optimal fuel source, but if you’re getting them from nowhere, that solves all our energy woes.
It also might make the planet gain mass, eventually, if you did enough of it for long enough. Hmm. Oh, well, you can use that to make spacecraft. Maybe. Or something.
That and blood pudding. And fertilizer.
I think actually, being able to poof human corpses into existence would be an improvement over the current state of affairs. It might still be sub-optimal, but it would be better.
Now I want to be able to poof human corpses into existence from nowhere. I also think maybe I should start a list of things I’ve said that I wouldn’t have been able to predict that I would say if asked the day before.
Less Wrong: Rationality, polyamory, cannibalism.
...though the other order would be more challenging.
Someone need to make an SCP based of this.
There already is, if you’re willing to combine two: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-871 http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-604
Nobody said “free.” The operational costs of corpse-poofing might be prohibitive.
Well, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Less Wrong: Rationality, polyamory, cannibalism.
“the person would then be dead” seems to pretty clearly imply that there was a person involved. In the case where a corpse poofs into existence from nowhere, there doesn’t seem to have ever been a person involved. I conclude that “Because the person would then be dead” doesn’t apply to the case where a corpse poofs into existence from nowhere. So I’m not sure why we would need to further specify anything here.
All of that said, the whole approach of counting deaths as negative utility seems to me to be rescuing the wrong part of the original nonconsequentialist claim in the first place.
It’s clear that one consequence of increasing the human population from 1 billion people to 7 billion people is that many more people die per unit time, but it doesn’t follow from that fact that we should reject increasing human population on consequentialist grounds. (It might be true that we should so reject it, but even if true it doesn’t follow from that fact.)
It seems that the part we would want to rescue from a consequentialist POV is the idea that more life-years is good, so any act that reduces expected net lifeyears is bad… and also, perhaps, the idea that more life-years/person is good, so any act that reduces expected net lifeyears/person is bad.
This would also render all concerns about how we define “death” moot.
You still need to weigh emotional trauma caused by corpse-poofing.
Eh, people would get used to it.