6 ms·

Luckily I'm one of the Chosen Few who would always have been allowed to exist.

by Lammy 2y ago

casercaramel144 2y ago
I mean yeah. Not existing has a utility value of 0. You can make the same argument for people who don't exist yet. Is it infinite utility to go around as a government and force people to pump out 100 babies a year? Since not existing is so bad? TBH if I never existed by definition I would be fine with it, you know, since I don't exist and was never born. I don't think its coherent to measure things from aggregate utilitarian POV, since the optimal solution seems relentless expansionism like a virus.
- Lammy 2y ago
  > I don't think its coherent to measure things from aggregate utilitarian POV I do, because second-person collectively-singular Humanity is a living thing all its own, and the more humans there are the more alive We are. Your argument is the anthropological equivalent of “640K ought to be enough for anybody”.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    Having more than 640Kb of RAM isn't a good in of itself, it's only good in that applications arose which required more RAM. Similarly higher population isn't a good in of itself. It seems to me that there's much less evidence that there's something that needs higher population. I don't see how higher population necessarily makes humanity as a collective organism more human. That seems like saying that an individual human is more human if they weigh more.
    - Lammy 2y ago
      > I don't see how Try ketamine some time with good sensory deprivation — comfy bed, silk sleep mask, ear plugs :)
  - casercaramel144 2y ago
    So by the tyranny of exponential growth, we should just start building massive breeding factories and forceably enslaving people randomly matching them to have children? Because this could actually be the optimal policy if we take your view of "second persons" to it's optimum. In your world governments forceably breed humans like chickens in massive factory farms churning out people to the carrying capacity of the planet. I don't want to live there and I sure as hell don't find it moral.
    - ipaddr 2y ago
      Why not encourage through policy and taxation changes? Invest in culture that promotes. Restructure society to encourage having babies at an earlier age.
      - casercaramel144 2y ago
        Since that's nearly certainly less efficient at population expansion compared to physical violence. Conservatively, modern humans seem to settle at having 2~4 children per woman but historically it was not uncommon to have families of size exceeding 10. The whole point is that if you accept the fact that expanding population is good a priori, this leads to stupid conclusions by the tyranny of exponential growth. Who cares if the average person is a slave when you have several hundred billion of them. Who cares if mothers die horribly after being forced to carry child after child. Personally I think the only consistent viewpoint is some form of logarithmic population * average well being metric to measure utility. From that perspective, I have no clue how a policy maker should act today. Hopefully smarter minds than mine figure it out!
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      You think maybe there could be a pretty large spectrum of solutions between stopping population growth and massive forced breeding factories?
    - Lammy 2y ago
      > Because this could actually be the optimal policy if we take your view of "second persons" to it's optimum. Maybe if you're evil enough to not care about any individual human's quality of life. Is there a word for the logical fallacy where you argue against the most absurd possible interpretation of a person's beliefs in order to feel no guilt for disregarding them?

Luckily I'm one of the Chosen Few who would always have been allowed to exist.

by Lammy 2y ago

Luckily I'm one of the Chosen Few who would always have been allowed to exist.

I mean yeah. Not existing has a utility value of 0. You can make the same argument for people who don't exist yet. Is it infinite utility to go around as a government and force people to pump out 100 babies a year? Since not existing is so bad? TBH if I never existed by definition I would be fine with it, you know, since I don't exist and was never born. I don't think its coherent to measure things from aggregate utilitarian POV, since the optimal solution seems relentless expansionism like a virus.

Lammy 2y ago
> I don't think its coherent to measure things from aggregate utilitarian POV I do, because second-person collectively-singular Humanity is a living thing all its own, and the more humans there are the more alive We are. Your argument is the anthropological equivalent of “640K ought to be enough for anybody”.
- harimau777 2y ago
  Having more than 640Kb of RAM isn't a good in of itself, it's only good in that applications arose which required more RAM. Similarly higher population isn't a good in of itself. It seems to me that there's much less evidence that there's something that needs higher population. I don't see how higher population necessarily makes humanity as a collective organism more human. That seems like saying that an individual human is more human if they weigh more.
  - Lammy 2y ago
    > I don't see how Try ketamine some time with good sensory deprivation — comfy bed, silk sleep mask, ear plugs :)
- casercaramel144 2y ago
  So by the tyranny of exponential growth, we should just start building massive breeding factories and forceably enslaving people randomly matching them to have children? Because this could actually be the optimal policy if we take your view of "second persons" to it's optimum. In your world governments forceably breed humans like chickens in massive factory farms churning out people to the carrying capacity of the planet. I don't want to live there and I sure as hell don't find it moral.
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    Why not encourage through policy and taxation changes? Invest in culture that promotes. Restructure society to encourage having babies at an earlier age.
    - casercaramel144 2y ago
      Since that's nearly certainly less efficient at population expansion compared to physical violence. Conservatively, modern humans seem to settle at having 2~4 children per woman but historically it was not uncommon to have families of size exceeding 10. The whole point is that if you accept the fact that expanding population is good a priori, this leads to stupid conclusions by the tyranny of exponential growth. Who cares if the average person is a slave when you have several hundred billion of them. Who cares if mothers die horribly after being forced to carry child after child. Personally I think the only consistent viewpoint is some form of logarithmic population * average well being metric to measure utility. From that perspective, I have no clue how a policy maker should act today. Hopefully smarter minds than mine figure it out!
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    You think maybe there could be a pretty large spectrum of solutions between stopping population growth and massive forced breeding factories?
  - Lammy 2y ago
    > Because this could actually be the optimal policy if we take your view of "second persons" to it's optimum. Maybe if you're evil enough to not care about any individual human's quality of life. Is there a word for the logical fallacy where you argue against the most absurd possible interpretation of a person's beliefs in order to feel no guilt for disregarding them?