I suspect that you are imagining this world a good because you can’t actually separate your imagined observer from the world. The world you are talking about is not just a failure of humanity it is a world where we have failed so much that nothing is alive to witness our failure.
I don’t think you can call such a world good or perfect, but I don’t think it’s all bad either. I quess you could call it neutral.
I mean, I don’t see that world as a big failure, if a failure at all. No civilization will be there forever*, but the one I mentioned had at least achieved something at it’s time: it had once been glorious. While it left it’s statues, it still managed to keep the world habitable for life and other species. (note how I mentioned trees and plants growing on the ruins). To put it simple, it was a beatiful civilization that left a beatiful world.. It isn’t fair to call it a failure only because it wasn’t eternal.
I’ll only speak for myself, but ‘everybody dead’ gives an output nowhere near zero on my utility function. Everybody dead is awful. It’s not the worst imaginable outcome, but it is really really really low in my preference ordering. I can see why you would think it’s neutral—there’s nobody to be happy but there’s nobody to suffer either. However, if you think that people dying is a bad thing in itself, this outcome really is horrifying.
I suspect that you are imagining this world a good because you can’t actually separate your imagined observer from the world. The world you are talking about is not just a failure of humanity it is a world where we have failed so much that nothing is alive to witness our failure.
I don’t think you can call such a world good or perfect, but I don’t think it’s all bad either. I quess you could call it neutral.
I mean, I don’t see that world as a big failure, if a failure at all. No civilization will be there forever*, but the one I mentioned had at least achieved something at it’s time: it had once been glorious. While it left it’s statues, it still managed to keep the world habitable for life and other species. (note how I mentioned trees and plants growing on the ruins). To put it simple, it was a beatiful civilization that left a beatiful world.. It isn’t fair to call it a failure only because it wasn’t eternal.
*Who am I to say that?
I’ll only speak for myself, but ‘everybody dead’ gives an output nowhere near zero on my utility function. Everybody dead is awful. It’s not the worst imaginable outcome, but it is really really really low in my preference ordering. I can see why you would think it’s neutral—there’s nobody to be happy but there’s nobody to suffer either. However, if you think that people dying is a bad thing in itself, this outcome really is horrifying.