I think this is especially clear with respect to our influence on what sort of future people will exist. Thus, consider again the example I discussed in earlier essay, of a boulder rolling towards a button that will create a Alice, paperclip-maximizer, but which can be diverted towards a button that will create Bob, who loves joy and beauty and niceness and so on, instead (and who loves life, as well, to a degree that makes him very much want to get-created if anyone has the chance to create him). Suppose that you choose to divert the boulder and create Bob instead of Alice. And suppose that you do so even without believing that an objectively-authoritative Tao endorses and legitimizes your choice.
Are you a tyrant? Have you “enslaved” Bob? I think Lewis’s stated view answers yes, here, and that this is wrong. In particular: a thing you didn’t do, here, is break into Alice’s house while she was sleeping, and alter her brain to make her care about joy/beauty/niceness rather than paperclips.[16] Nor have you kept Bob in any chains, or as any prisoner following any triumphal car.
I object to this thought experiment on the same basis as the problem with the GLUT; “Bob, who loves joy and beauty and niceness and so on” is a high-information concept who would not have appeared by chance. Some process had to make Bob’s details, and the tyranny/slavery/poultry-keeping could be attributed to this process, rather than to you who merely diverted a boulder and only contributed 1 bit of information.
I object to this thought experiment on the same basis as the problem with the GLUT; “Bob, who loves joy and beauty and niceness and so on” is a high-information concept who would not have appeared by chance. Some process had to make Bob’s details, and the tyranny/slavery/poultry-keeping could be attributed to this process, rather than to you who merely diverted a boulder and only contributed 1 bit of information.