*Our* extrapolated volitions might turn out to prefer immortality over reproduction, but it would be reasonable to guess that over all possible intelligent species, this would be relatively rare: Living things live to reproduce, literally. They’re all about reproducing. They like surviving too but it’s never the root goal.
So even if our CEV did turn out to favor immortality over reproduction, we would still find ourselves somewhere improbable, and we would still have to wonder, why?
I can imagine a sort of compromise CEV… Say we accept that immortality and reproduction are mutually exclusive. What if we ended up choosing a softer, less tragic kind of mortality where post-organic modes of communication allow all knowledge to be passed from parent to child, all projects continued. Might that be the norm instead?
*Our* extrapolated volitions might turn out to prefer immortality over reproduction, but it would be reasonable to guess that over all possible intelligent species, this would be relatively rare: Living things live to reproduce, literally. They’re all about reproducing. They like surviving too but it’s never the root goal.
So even if our CEV did turn out to favor immortality over reproduction, we would still find ourselves somewhere improbable, and we would still have to wonder, why?
I can imagine a sort of compromise CEV… Say we accept that immortality and reproduction are mutually exclusive. What if we ended up choosing a softer, less tragic kind of mortality where post-organic modes of communication allow all knowledge to be passed from parent to child, all projects continued. Might that be the norm instead?