S-risks aren’t disproportionately important to many people. Personally I think they’re only a bit worse than death, and aesthetically I think they’re maybe twice as bad as human extinction.
This should be combined with a likelihood estimate to recommend actions.
If you get to pick how the universe is arranged in the future, would you rather it be lifeless and full of shit, or lifeless and full of brilliant art? I’m gonna guess that you, like me, would prefer art.
This is an aesthetic preference about how you’d rather the atoms in the universe be arranged. You don’t need to justify it by any deeper principle, it doesn’t matter that you’re not around to care in either case, it’s sufficient for you to prefer universes full of art to universes full of shit as a raw preference, and this can motivate you to steer the future to favor one over the other.
I find universes full of cosmopolitan civilizations good, and universes full of suffering bad, in just this raw way.
You might also call it “non person-affecting preferences over the use of atoms in the universe.”
Interesting take! Obviously that’s different for me and many others, but you’re not alone with that. I even know someone who would be ready to cook in a lava lake forever if it implies continuing to exist. I think that’s also in line with the DALY disability weights, but only because they artificially scale them to the 0–1 interval.
So I imagine you’d never make such a deal as shortening you life by three hours in exchange for not experiencing one hour of the worst pain or other suffering you’ve experienced?
I even know someone who would be ready to cook in a lava lake forever if it implies continuing to exist.
Sorry for pursuing this tangent (which I’m assuming you’ll feel free to ignore), but have they ever indicated how likely they think it is that they would continue to hold that preference while in the lava lake?
(I was aware some people voiced preferences like this, but I haven’t directly discussed it with any of them. I’ve often wondered whether they think they would, in the (eternally repeated) moment, prefer the suffering to death, or whether they are willing to condemn themselves to infinite suffering even though they expect to intensely regret it. In both cases I think they are horribly mistaken, but in quite different ways.)
The example I was thinking of is this one. (There’s a similar thread here.) So in this case it’s the first option – they don’t think they’ll prefer death. But my “forever” was an extrapolation. It’s been almost three years since I read the comment.
I’m the ECL type of intersubjective moral antirealist. So in my mind, whether they really want what they want is none of my business, but what that says about what is desirable as a general policy for people we can’t ask is a largely empirical question that hasn’t been answered yet. :-3
So I imagine you’d never make such a deal as shortening you life by three hours in exchange for not experiencing one hour of the worst pain or other suffering you’ve experienced?
It’s plausible you could catch me on days where I would take the deal, but basically yeah, 3:1 seems like plenty of incentive to choose life, whereas at 1:1 (the lava lake thing), life isn’t worth it (though maybe you could catch me on days etc etc).
S-risks aren’t disproportionately important to many people. Personally I think they’re only a bit worse than death, and aesthetically I think they’re maybe twice as bad as human extinction.
This should be combined with a likelihood estimate to recommend actions.
“aesthetically”?
If you get to pick how the universe is arranged in the future, would you rather it be lifeless and full of shit, or lifeless and full of brilliant art? I’m gonna guess that you, like me, would prefer art.
This is an aesthetic preference about how you’d rather the atoms in the universe be arranged. You don’t need to justify it by any deeper principle, it doesn’t matter that you’re not around to care in either case, it’s sufficient for you to prefer universes full of art to universes full of shit as a raw preference, and this can motivate you to steer the future to favor one over the other.
I find universes full of cosmopolitan civilizations good, and universes full of suffering bad, in just this raw way.
You might also call it “non person-affecting preferences over the use of atoms in the universe.”
Interesting take! Obviously that’s different for me and many others, but you’re not alone with that. I even know someone who would be ready to cook in a lava lake forever if it implies continuing to exist. I think that’s also in line with the DALY disability weights, but only because they artificially scale them to the 0–1 interval.
So I imagine you’d never make such a deal as shortening you life by three hours in exchange for not experiencing one hour of the worst pain or other suffering you’ve experienced?
Sorry for pursuing this tangent (which I’m assuming you’ll feel free to ignore), but have they ever indicated how likely they think it is that they would continue to hold that preference while in the lava lake?
(I was aware some people voiced preferences like this, but I haven’t directly discussed it with any of them. I’ve often wondered whether they think they would, in the (eternally repeated) moment, prefer the suffering to death, or whether they are willing to condemn themselves to infinite suffering even though they expect to intensely regret it. In both cases I think they are horribly mistaken, but in quite different ways.)
The example I was thinking of is this one. (There’s a similar thread here.) So in this case it’s the first option – they don’t think they’ll prefer death. But my “forever” was an extrapolation. It’s been almost three years since I read the comment.
I’m the ECL type of intersubjective moral antirealist. So in my mind, whether they really want what they want is none of my business, but what that says about what is desirable as a general policy for people we can’t ask is a largely empirical question that hasn’t been answered yet. :-3
It’s plausible you could catch me on days where I would take the deal, but basically yeah, 3:1 seems like plenty of incentive to choose life, whereas at 1:1 (the lava lake thing), life isn’t worth it (though maybe you could catch me on days etc etc).
Huh, thanks!