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Looking at the lens of "who will clean this up", future generations. Looking at "who was there before and will be after my visit", then human civilization outl

• logicchains 6y ago
  >Looking at the lens of "who will clean this up", future generations. And how do we weigh the satisfaction of potential future people against people currently existing? It's not easy; if we assign some value to future people, then that implies we should try to have more children, to maximise the sum total of future people's satisfaction. >Looking at "who was there before and will be after my visit", then human civilization outlives each and every one of us. Metaphysically speaking, it's quite possible that every moment of human experience is going to happen anyway, regardless of what we do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain.
  • rhn_mk1 6y ago
    > if we assign some value to future people, then that implies we should try to have more children, to maximise the sum total of future people's satisfaction. Not quite. While it would be true (The Repugnant Conclusion) if every future person had positive quality of life, there can be a point where adding new people pushes everyone's quality of life into negative. > Metaphysically speaking, it's quite possible that every moment of human experience is going to happen anyway, regardless of what we do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain. My point was more that the purpose of life could be seen as sustaining the continuity of this civilization. Presumably, Boltzmann brains would not correspond to any civilization more often than any other, so they don't take anything away from the value of a life and the duty to preserve resources.