“Oh you like things that are good and not bad? Well can you define good? Is it cooperation? Pleasure? Friendship? Merely DNA replication? If you’re ok with being bad to evil people, you are in a certain sense pro-bad-things. We’re merely talking price”
If your grandchildren adopt an extremely genetically distant human, is that okay? A highly intelligent, social and biologically compatible alien?
You’ve said you’re fine with simulations here, so it’s really unclear.
I used “markov blanket” to describe what I thought you might be talking about: a continuous voluntary process characterized by you and your decedents making free choices about their future. But it seems like you’re saying “markov blanket bad”, and moreover that you thought the distinction should have be obvious to me.
Even if there isn’t a bright-line definition, there must be some cluster of traits/attributes you are associating with the word “kind”.
I will note I’m not Nina and did not write the OP, so can’t speak to what she’d say.
I though would consider those I love & who love me, who are my friends, or who love a certain kind of enlightenment morality to be central examples of “my kind”.
Like… I’m trying to figure out why the title of the post is “I am not a successionist” and not “like many other utilitarians I have a preference for people who are biologically similar to me, I have things in common with, or I am close friends with. I believe when optimizing utility in the far future we should take these things into account”
Even though can’t comment on OP’s views, you seemed to have a strong objection to my “we’re merely talking price” statement (i.e. when calculating total utility we consider tradeoffs between different things we care about).
Edit:
to put it another way, if I wrote a post titled “I am a successionist” in which I said something like: “I want my children to have happy lives and their children to have happy lives, and I believe they can define ‘children’ in whatever way seems best to them”, how would my views actually different from yours (or the OPs)?
“Oh you like things that are good and not bad? Well can you define good? Is it cooperation? Pleasure? Friendship? Merely DNA replication? If you’re ok with being bad to evil people, you are in a certain sense pro-bad-things. We’re merely talking price”
I genuinely want to know what you mean by “kind”.
If your grandchildren adopt an extremely genetically distant human, is that okay? A highly intelligent, social and biologically compatible alien?
You’ve said you’re fine with simulations here, so it’s really unclear.
I used “markov blanket” to describe what I thought you might be talking about: a continuous voluntary process characterized by you and your decedents making free choices about their future. But it seems like you’re saying “markov blanket bad”, and moreover that you thought the distinction should have be obvious to me.
Even if there isn’t a bright-line definition, there must be some cluster of traits/attributes you are associating with the word “kind”.
I will note I’m not Nina and did not write the OP, so can’t speak to what she’d say.
I though would consider those I love & who love me, who are my friends, or who love a certain kind of enlightenment morality to be central examples of “my kind”.
Those all sound line fairly normal beliefs.
Like… I’m trying to figure out why the title of the post is “I am not a successionist” and not “like many other utilitarians I have a preference for people who are biologically similar to me, I have things in common with, or I am close friends with. I believe when optimizing utility in the far future we should take these things into account”
Even though can’t comment on OP’s views, you seemed to have a strong objection to my “we’re merely talking price” statement (i.e. when calculating total utility we consider tradeoffs between different things we care about).
Edit:
to put it another way, if I wrote a post titled “I am a successionist” in which I said something like: “I want my children to have happy lives and their children to have happy lives, and I believe they can define ‘children’ in whatever way seems best to them”, how would my views actually different from yours (or the OPs)?