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I don't see why hypothetical people have any moral weight. Future people aren't as important as present people, no matter how many of them you imagine, because

by mrob 8y ago

I don't see why hypothetical people have any moral weight. Future people aren't as important as present people, no matter how many of them you imagine, because they aren't real. IMO the sole reason to care about the future of humanity is that a great many real, non-hypothetical people want to have children, and because those children will be born without their consent, we have a duty to provide a livable world for them.

aetherson 8y ago
So let's say that you have a magic button that will give every person on Earth now living a 10% improvement in their material living conditions for the rest of their lives -- and will completely destroy the world in 150 years. That gives everyone now living a chance to have children who live full and complete lives. Grand children and great grandchildren maybe not so much. Is it uncomplicatedly the obvious right thing to do to press the button? If not, I think you and Cowen are expressing similar or the same ideas in different ways.
- mrob 8y ago
  I'd press it only if it wouldn't kill anyone, which would require the unlikely scenario of all humans agreeing to stop breeding. What I reject is the idea that "be fruitful and multiply" is an inherent good. If future humans actually do decide on voluntary extinction, that's their choice and they are doing nothing wrong. If hypothetical future people have rights [edit: I do believe hypothetical future people have rights in the sense of it being wrong to take actions that are reasonably expected to set up a causal chain of event that will kill people who don't yet exist, but I do not believe a future with 100B humans is better than one with 10B humans with the same quality of life], why don't we also ban gay marriage and votes for women etc. because it offends past people?
  - aetherson 8y ago
    It most likely won't kill anyone who currently exists, which are the only people you're claiming have rights. My point is that once you start considering the counterfactual world of 150 years from now in terms of, "What harm will it do to the people alive then," there's very little daylight between your views and Cowen's. I don't think that Cowen believes that there's an absolute moral importance to have children, for example.
Sniffnoy 8y ago
Apologies for being flip, but: The future isn't hypothetical. It's very real. It just isn't here yet.
- mrob 8y ago
  If you reject free will from a philosophical point of view (regardless of whether it's "real" or not in any other sense), then morality becomes nonsense. If you say that the hypothetical future people are actually already there in 4D spacetime, then nothing can be right or wrong because it's all fated. Morality assumes humans are able to alter the future.
  - Sniffnoy 8y ago
    This is a confusion. One's own decisions are part of the physics that relate the present to the future. Basically you're doing a half-correction here; you're taking the naive view that one's decisions are something separate and outside determinism, and then noting, aha, but there is nothing separate and outside determinism, and then concluding that therefore there are no decisions; rather than properly adjusting the notion of decision to a deterministic world. Because decisions definitely happen! It's just that the idea of them as something separate and outside of physics was a bad description, not something that valid inferences can be drawn from. Or maybe I should just link Eliezer Yudkowsky, because I primarily just don't really want to go down this rabbit-hole: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NEeW7eSXThPz7o4Ne/thou-art-physics https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NEeW7eSXThPz7o4Ne/thou-art-p...

by mrob 8y ago

aetherson 8y ago

So let's say that you have a magic button that will give every person on Earth now living a 10% improvement in their material living conditions for the rest of their lives -- and will completely destroy the world in 150 years. That gives everyone now living a chance to have children who live full and complete lives. Grand children and great grandchildren maybe not so much. Is it uncomplicatedly the obvious right thing to do to press the button? If not, I think you and Cowen are expressing similar or the same ideas in different ways.

mrob 8y ago
I'd press it only if it wouldn't kill anyone, which would require the unlikely scenario of all humans agreeing to stop breeding. What I reject is the idea that "be fruitful and multiply" is an inherent good. If future humans actually do decide on voluntary extinction, that's their choice and they are doing nothing wrong. If hypothetical future people have rights [edit: I do believe hypothetical future people have rights in the sense of it being wrong to take actions that are reasonably expected to set up a causal chain of event that will kill people who don't yet exist, but I do not believe a future with 100B humans is better than one with 10B humans with the same quality of life], why don't we also ban gay marriage and votes for women etc. because it offends past people?
- aetherson 8y ago
  It most likely won't kill anyone who currently exists, which are the only people you're claiming have rights. My point is that once you start considering the counterfactual world of 150 years from now in terms of, "What harm will it do to the people alive then," there's very little daylight between your views and Cowen's. I don't think that Cowen believes that there's an absolute moral importance to have children, for example.

Sniffnoy 8y ago

Apologies for being flip, but: The future isn't hypothetical. It's very real. It just isn't here yet.

mrob 8y ago
If you reject free will from a philosophical point of view (regardless of whether it's "real" or not in any other sense), then morality becomes nonsense. If you say that the hypothetical future people are actually already there in 4D spacetime, then nothing can be right or wrong because it's all fated. Morality assumes humans are able to alter the future.
- Sniffnoy 8y ago
  This is a confusion. One's own decisions are part of the physics that relate the present to the future. Basically you're doing a half-correction here; you're taking the naive view that one's decisions are something separate and outside determinism, and then noting, aha, but there is nothing separate and outside determinism, and then concluding that therefore there are no decisions; rather than properly adjusting the notion of decision to a deterministic world. Because decisions definitely happen! It's just that the idea of them as something separate and outside of physics was a bad description, not something that valid inferences can be drawn from. Or maybe I should just link Eliezer Yudkowsky, because I primarily just don't really want to go down this rabbit-hole: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NEeW7eSXThPz7o4Ne/thou-art-physics https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NEeW7eSXThPz7o4Ne/thou-art-p...