If future generations average the welfare of lives after their “present moments”, they will make decisions we disapprove of.
Can you give an example? It seems to me that if they decide at t_1 to maximise average welfare from t_1 to ∞, then given that welfare from t_0 to t_1 is held fixed, that decision will also maximise average welfare from t_0 to ∞.
Edit: oh, I was thinking of an average over time, not people.
Earth produces a long and prosperous civilization. After nearly all the resources are used up, the lean and hardscrapple survivors reason, “let’s figure out how to squeeze the last bits of computation out of the environment so that our children will enjoy a better life than us before our species goes extinct”. But from our perspective, those children won’t have as much welfare as the vast majority of human lives in our future, so those children being born would bring our average down. We would will the hardscrapple survivors to not produce more people.
Can you give an example? It seems to me that if they decide at t_1 to maximise average welfare from t_1 to ∞, then given that welfare from t_0 to t_1 is held fixed, that decision will also maximise average welfare from t_0 to ∞.
Edit: oh, I was thinking of an average over time, not people.
Earth produces a long and prosperous civilization. After nearly all the resources are used up, the lean and hardscrapple survivors reason, “let’s figure out how to squeeze the last bits of computation out of the environment so that our children will enjoy a better life than us before our species goes extinct”. But from our perspective, those children won’t have as much welfare as the vast majority of human lives in our future, so those children being born would bring our average down. We would will the hardscrapple survivors to not produce more people.