A couple of nitpicks on the calculations for the size of the moral universe:
The the average span of a mammalian species seems somewhat a spurious metric to use for humanity, given that we have already largely nullified the natural environmental and evolutionary drivers of such a bound (via technology and civilisation[1]).
perhaps the length of the Stelliferous Era (~100T years) is a more natural bound than the lifetime of the Sun (~5B years). It seems unlikely that we would colonise the solar system and last for billions of years without successfully crossing interstellar space.
Open Individualism suggests that we should be counting person-years (or animal-years) rather than individual animals. Intuitively, this seems more natural especially for animals with lower complexity brains who are unlikely to have much of a sense of self (even if they are sentient and can suffer).
This is not to say that we won’t go extinct from artificial environmental and evolutionary causes of our own making. Just that bounding to a number (1M years) that originates from natural (nonanthropogenic) processes seems highly arbitrary.
Directionally, I agree with your points. On the last one, I’ll note that counting person-years (or animal-years) falls naturally out of empty individualism as well as open individualism, and so the point goes through under the (substantively) weaker claim of “either open or empty individualism is true”.[1]
For the casual reader: The three candidate theories of personal identity are empty, open, and closed individualism. Closed is the common sense view, but most people who have thought seriously about personal identity—e.g., Parfit—have concluded that it must be false (tl;dr: because nothing, not memory in particular, can “carry” identity in the way that’s needed for closed individualism to make sense). Of the remaining two candidates, open appears to be the fringe view—supporters include Kolak, Johnson, Vinding, and Gomez-Emilsson (although Kolak’s response to Cornwall makes it unclear to what extent he is indeed a supporter). Proponents of (what we now call) empty individualism include Parfit, Nozick, Shoemaker, and Hume.
If we’re looking at upper bounds, even the Stelliferous Era is highly conservative. The Black Hole era could last up to 10<sup>100</sup> years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ages_of_the_Universe and it’s at least conceivable under known physics that we could farm their rotational energy or still more speculatively their Hawking radiation.
Usual Pascalian reasoning applies in that this would allow such a ridiculously large number of person-years that even with an implausibly low credence in its possibility the expectation dwarfs the whole stellar era.
The problem with this position is that the Black Hole Era—at least, the way the “Five Ages of the Universe” article you link to defines it—only starts after proton decay has run to (effective) completion,[1] which means that all matter will be in black holes, which means that conscious beings will not exist to farm black holes for their energy. (If do, however, agree that life is in theory not dependent on luminous stars, and so life could continue beyond the Stelliferous Era and into the Degenerate Era, which adds many years.)
Whether proton decay will actually happen is still a major open question in physics. See, for example, Hadhazy (2021) or Siegel (2020).
(Additionally, if proton decay does happen, there’s then the question of “could a technologically mature civilization stop proton decay?”. My money would be on “no”, but of course our current understanding of particle decay physics could be incorrect, or an advanced civilization might find an ingenious workaround.)
As you say, whether proton decay will happen seems to be an open question. If you’re feeling highly confident you could knock off another couple of zeroes to represent that credence and still end up with a number that eclipses everything else.
A couple of nitpicks on the calculations for the size of the moral universe:
The the average span of a mammalian species seems somewhat a spurious metric to use for humanity, given that we have already largely nullified the natural environmental and evolutionary drivers of such a bound (via technology and civilisation[1]).
perhaps the length of the Stelliferous Era (~100T years) is a more natural bound than the lifetime of the Sun (~5B years). It seems unlikely that we would colonise the solar system and last for billions of years without successfully crossing interstellar space.
Open Individualism suggests that we should be counting person-years (or animal-years) rather than individual animals. Intuitively, this seems more natural especially for animals with lower complexity brains who are unlikely to have much of a sense of self (even if they are sentient and can suffer).
This is not to say that we won’t go extinct from artificial environmental and evolutionary causes of our own making. Just that bounding to a number (1M years) that originates from natural (nonanthropogenic) processes seems highly arbitrary.
Directionally, I agree with your points. On the last one, I’ll note that counting person-years (or animal-years) falls naturally out of empty individualism as well as open individualism, and so the point goes through under the (substantively) weaker claim of “either open or empty individualism is true”.[1]
(You may be interested in David Pearce’s take on closed, empty, and open individualism.)
For the casual reader: The three candidate theories of personal identity are empty, open, and closed individualism. Closed is the common sense view, but most people who have thought seriously about personal identity—e.g., Parfit—have concluded that it must be false (tl;dr: because nothing, not memory in particular, can “carry” identity in the way that’s needed for closed individualism to make sense). Of the remaining two candidates, open appears to be the fringe view—supporters include Kolak, Johnson, Vinding, and Gomez-Emilsson (although Kolak’s response to Cornwall makes it unclear to what extent he is indeed a supporter). Proponents of (what we now call) empty individualism include Parfit, Nozick, Shoemaker, and Hume.
Agree. I find Empty Individualism pretty depressing to think about though. And Open Individualism seems more natural, from (my) subjective experience.
If we’re looking at upper bounds, even the Stelliferous Era is highly conservative. The Black Hole era could last up to 10<sup>100</sup> years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Ages_of_the_Universe and it’s at least conceivable under known physics that we could farm their rotational energy or still more speculatively their Hawking radiation.
Usual Pascalian reasoning applies in that this would allow such a ridiculously large number of person-years that even with an implausibly low credence in its possibility the expectation dwarfs the whole stellar era.
The problem with this position is that the Black Hole Era—at least, the way the “Five Ages of the Universe” article you link to defines it—only starts after proton decay has run to (effective) completion,[1] which means that all matter will be in black holes, which means that conscious beings will not exist to farm black holes for their energy. (If do, however, agree that life is in theory not dependent on luminous stars, and so life could continue beyond the Stelliferous Era and into the Degenerate Era, which adds many years.)
Whether proton decay will actually happen is still a major open question in physics. See, for example, Hadhazy (2021) or Siegel (2020).
(Additionally, if proton decay does happen, there’s then the question of “could a technologically mature civilization stop proton decay?”. My money would be on “no”, but of course our current understanding of particle decay physics could be incorrect, or an advanced civilization might find an ingenious workaround.)
As you say, whether proton decay will happen seems to be an open question. If you’re feeling highly confident you could knock off another couple of zeroes to represent that credence and still end up with a number that eclipses everything else.