On 2017-03-22 11:32, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Hi Tim,
Ok, I don't disagree. I would just argue that being condemned to live
in a zoo could be considered an even worse outcome that extinction.
No?
There's certainly a school of self-proclaimed hedonists
that identifies the normal resting state as hedonic zero,
and categorizes anything below that as "suffering". Vegans
use this type of reasoning to justify the notion that it
would be better for factory-farmed animals if they had never
been born. There's even a book titled "Better Never to Have
Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence" that makes a
similar argument for humans.
I generally favor an alternative position which I
refer to as "the ecstasy of existence". According
to this idea, not existing is very bad, and you
have to go a long way into the realms of pain and
fear before you reach states that are comparably bad.
I claim that this position is better supported by
evolutionary theory, and by the low incidence of
suicide. In practice, most creatures prefer suffering
to death - at least up to a point.
My position identifies far future humans in historical
simulations as being likely to lead reasonable lives -
and that's better than not existing at all.
Of course, there's also the much-discussed hypothesis
that machines will subject those who oppose their
construction to eternal torture under simulation -
in order to better motivate their originals. Under
such a "hellish" scenario, many far future humans would
lead pretty miserable lives. However, it doesn't seem
very plausible that machines will bother making
credible commitments to subject humans to eternal
torture. Such machines would not be very popular
and we probably won't build them.
[snip history and link to http://matchingpennies.com/far_future_humans/ ]
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