Under a (somewhat) plausible theory of wellbeing, you may want to consider the deep terrestrial potential of improving the lives of the dead.
To explain requires some exposition. The two most prominent theories of wellbeing are hedonism and satisfactionism. The first claims that life is best for you when you feel best, and the second claims that life goes best when you satisfy your desires.
Satisfactionist or desire theories of wellbeing cleave into two further camps. One in which it’s important you feel that you satisfy your desires. The other is “objective”, where what is morally relevant is not that you think you’re getting what you want, but that you actually get what you want. Note that the first type of satisfactionist would hop into the experience machine with the hedonists. Also, in the second theory, if your partner cheats on you for years and you never found out, it would consider that your life is worse—which many people find intuitive.
I think Parfit had a thought experiment regarding Actual Satisfactionist theories where a man burns his whole life with a profound desire that there is life on another planet. He lives. Earth is alone. He dies. The next day, scientists discover life on mars! It was there the whole time. He never felt his desire satisfied, but it was, and his life was better for it.
This strikes some readers as strange. However, for those willing to bite this bullet, I offer you more. Imagine the “Life on Mars” case. Except, this version has a twist. Life wasn’t there the whole time. Mars was dead. However, the year after he dies Elon rockets to the red planet with a whole terrarium full of critters and founds a permanent colony.
Is the man’s life better off for having his desire fulfilled? If you think it’s plausible that his life in fact improved, you can probably guess where I’m going with this...
The dead are many. We should look not towards bettering future lives, but past lives if the following is true: A. We care bout people’s actual desires getting satisfied (and satisfying dying wishes counts), B. there are fewer people in the future than in the past and C. The dead carry coherent desires that we can satisfy.
Point B. is true if we believe Eliezer about AI and there’s nothing we can do about it. And to offer a candidate to fulfill point C: Children. Every one of your ancestor’s, and you had lots, I mean lots of them, by revealed preference wanted you to pass on their genes. Well now it’s down to you.
So if you’re into a weird variant of desire theories (can’t stand them myself), you may want to reconsider that vasectomy.
What we owe the past
(note: I know this post of the same title exists, but I haven’t read it)
Under a (somewhat) plausible theory of wellbeing, you may want to consider the deep terrestrial potential of improving the lives of the dead.
To explain requires some exposition. The two most prominent theories of wellbeing are hedonism and satisfactionism. The first claims that life is best for you when you feel best, and the second claims that life goes best when you satisfy your desires.
Satisfactionist or desire theories of wellbeing cleave into two further camps. One in which it’s important you feel that you satisfy your desires. The other is “objective”, where what is morally relevant is not that you think you’re getting what you want, but that you actually get what you want. Note that the first type of satisfactionist would hop into the experience machine with the hedonists. Also, in the second theory, if your partner cheats on you for years and you never found out, it would consider that your life is worse—which many people find intuitive.
I think Parfit had a thought experiment regarding Actual Satisfactionist theories where a man burns his whole life with a profound desire that there is life on another planet. He lives. Earth is alone. He dies. The next day, scientists discover life on mars! It was there the whole time. He never felt his desire satisfied, but it was, and his life was better for it.
This strikes some readers as strange. However, for those willing to bite this bullet, I offer you more. Imagine the “Life on Mars” case. Except, this version has a twist. Life wasn’t there the whole time. Mars was dead. However, the year after he dies Elon rockets to the red planet with a whole terrarium full of critters and founds a permanent colony.
Is the man’s life better off for having his desire fulfilled? If you think it’s plausible that his life in fact improved, you can probably guess where I’m going with this...
The dead are many. We should look not towards bettering future lives, but past lives if the following is true: A. We care bout people’s actual desires getting satisfied (and satisfying dying wishes counts), B. there are fewer people in the future than in the past and C. The dead carry coherent desires that we can satisfy.
Point B. is true if we believe Eliezer about AI and there’s nothing we can do about it. And to offer a candidate to fulfill point C: Children. Every one of your ancestor’s, and you had lots, I mean lots of them, by revealed preference wanted you to pass on their genes. Well now it’s down to you.
So if you’re into a weird variant of desire theories (can’t stand them myself), you may want to reconsider that vasectomy.