Upvoted for the interesting question, then revoked the upvote for unnecessary mindkill-bait.
...but it’s still an interesting question. It actually came to mind recently when someone I know and loathe died, and for a moment I thought “hrm. If cryonics was a widespread Thing, he would be less dead, and that would be bad.”
It didn’t take long to spot the obvious flaw: I’d trade the survival of people I don’t like for the survival of people I do in a heartbeat, so the benefits of cryonics as a whole (in the hypothetical world where it works, which I’m not convinced of) still outweigh the drawbacks of bad people getting preserved. That’s just the easy question, though. Working out whether it’s OK to say “hey, even if cyronics becomes near-universal, specific individuals should not be preserved” is harder. If you believe permitting someone’s death by inaction is morally equivalent to killing them, then the question reduces to the capital-punishment question. If you do not so believe...then I’m not sure.
Upvoted for the interesting question, then revoked the upvote for unnecessary mindkill-bait.
...but it’s still an interesting question. It actually came to mind recently when someone I know and loathe died, and for a moment I thought “hrm. If cryonics was a widespread Thing, he would be less dead, and that would be bad.”
It didn’t take long to spot the obvious flaw: I’d trade the survival of people I don’t like for the survival of people I do in a heartbeat, so the benefits of cryonics as a whole (in the hypothetical world where it works, which I’m not convinced of) still outweigh the drawbacks of bad people getting preserved. That’s just the easy question, though. Working out whether it’s OK to say “hey, even if cyronics becomes near-universal, specific individuals should not be preserved” is harder. If you believe permitting someone’s death by inaction is morally equivalent to killing them, then the question reduces to the capital-punishment question. If you do not so believe...then I’m not sure.
I’d like to know how to get from that position to something more like:
“I want the secret of the Dark Lord’s immortality in order to use it for everyone! ” (HPMoR)