I notice that I am surprised: you didn’t mention the grandfather problem situation. The existence of future lives is contingent on the survival of those peoples’ ancestors who live in the present day.
Also, on the “we’d probably like for our species to continue existing indefinitely” front, the importance of each individual life can be considered as the percentage of that species which the life represents. So if we anticipate that our current population is higher than our future population, one life in the present has relatively lower importance than one life in the future. But if we expect that the future population will be larger than the present, a present life has relatively higher importance than a future one.
I don’t see what you mean by the grandfather problem.
I don’t care about the specifics of who spawns the far future generation; whether it’s Alice or Bob I am only considering numbers here.
Saving lives now has consequences for the far future insofar as current people are irrepleceable: if they die, no one will make more children to compensate, resulting in a lower total far future population. Some deaths are less impactful than others for the far future.
That’s an interesting way to think about it, but I’m not convinced; killing half the population does not reduce the chance of survival of humanity by half.
In terms of individuals, only the last <.1% matter (not sure about the order of magnitude, but in any case it’s small as a proportion of the total).
It’s probably more useful to think in terms of events (nuclear war, misaligned ASI → prevent war, research alignment) or unsurvivable conditions (radiation, killer robots → build bunker, have kill switch) that can prevent humanity from recovering from a catastrophe.
I think the grandfather idea is that if you kill 100 people now, and the average person who dies would have had 1 descendant, and the large loss would happen in 100 years (~4 more generations), then the difference in total lives lived between the two scenarios is ~500, not 900. If the number of descendants per person is above ~1.2, then burying the waste means population after the larger loss in 100 years is actually higher than if you processed it now.
Obviously I’m also ignoring a whole lot of things here that I do think matter, as well.
And of course, as you pointed out in your reply to my comment above, it’s probably better to ignore the scenario description and just look at it as a pure choice along the lines of something like “Is it better to reduce total population by 900 if the deaths happen in 100 years instead of now?”
I notice that I am surprised: you didn’t mention the grandfather problem situation. The existence of future lives is contingent on the survival of those peoples’ ancestors who live in the present day.
Also, on the “we’d probably like for our species to continue existing indefinitely” front, the importance of each individual life can be considered as the percentage of that species which the life represents. So if we anticipate that our current population is higher than our future population, one life in the present has relatively lower importance than one life in the future. But if we expect that the future population will be larger than the present, a present life has relatively higher importance than a future one.
I don’t see what you mean by the grandfather problem.
I don’t care about the specifics of who spawns the far future generation; whether it’s Alice or Bob I am only considering numbers here.
Saving lives now has consequences for the far future insofar as current people are irrepleceable: if they die, no one will make more children to compensate, resulting in a lower total far future population. Some deaths are less impactful than others for the far future.
That’s an interesting way to think about it, but I’m not convinced; killing half the population does not reduce the chance of survival of humanity by half.
In terms of individuals, only the last <.1% matter (not sure about the order of magnitude, but in any case it’s small as a proportion of the total).
It’s probably more useful to think in terms of events (nuclear war, misaligned ASI → prevent war, research alignment) or unsurvivable conditions (radiation, killer robots → build bunker, have kill switch) that can prevent humanity from recovering from a catastrophe.
I think the grandfather idea is that if you kill 100 people now, and the average person who dies would have had 1 descendant, and the large loss would happen in 100 years (~4 more generations), then the difference in total lives lived between the two scenarios is ~500, not 900. If the number of descendants per person is above ~1.2, then burying the waste means population after the larger loss in 100 years is actually higher than if you processed it now.
Obviously I’m also ignoring a whole lot of things here that I do think matter, as well.
And of course, as you pointed out in your reply to my comment above, it’s probably better to ignore the scenario description and just look at it as a pure choice along the lines of something like “Is it better to reduce total population by 900 if the deaths happen in 100 years instead of now?”