This seems framed strangely to me. This seems mostly an issue we might face, say, in the far future where there is no more frontier, all available energy is being used to do something, and now we have to decide on tradeoffs between existing beings vs. possible future ones (or also on the relative size of beings or how much “cpu time” they get relative to “wall time”). As it stands today, this seems a non-issue since we are not at risk of preventing future people from existing by extending lives today (unless you have a compelling argument that this is the case).
This seems framed strangely to me. This seems mostly an issue we might face, say, in the far future where there is no more frontier, all available energy is being used to do something, and now we have to decide on tradeoffs between existing beings vs. possible future ones (or also on the relative size of beings or how much “cpu time” they get relative to “wall time”). As it stands today, this seems a non-issue since we are not at risk of preventing future people from existing by extending lives today (unless you have a compelling argument that this is the case).
I completely agree and I support further research on radical life extension (we might as well have the option and decide on the ethics later).
This is not a near-term issue in any sense, rather, it is more of an “ethical brainteaser” to identify different intuitions people have.