Yes, it is not automatically true that the class of people whose utility functions would have to be included for political reasons is necessarily the set of currently existing people. But again, including the utility functions of potentially large numbers of beings with potentially radically different values from ours could decrease the value to us of a universe maximized under the aggregation by a significant and maybe catastrophic amount, so if there does end up being substantial resistance to the idea of only including currently existing people, I think it would be worth arguing for instead of giving in on. I also think we live in the convenient world where that won’t be a problem.
All right, I can buy that. Although it may be that a small compromise is possible: taking future people into consideration with a time discount large enough that radically different people won’t muck things up. To be more specific (hence also more hypothetical), current people may insist on taking into account their children and grandchildren but not worry so much about what comes after. (Again, talking about what has to be explicitly included for political reasons, separate from what gets included via the actual utility functions of included people.) This is probably getting too hairsplitting to worry about any further. (^_^)
Yes, it is not automatically true that the class of people whose utility functions would have to be included for political reasons is necessarily the set of currently existing people. But again, including the utility functions of potentially large numbers of beings with potentially radically different values from ours could decrease the value to us of a universe maximized under the aggregation by a significant and maybe catastrophic amount, so if there does end up being substantial resistance to the idea of only including currently existing people, I think it would be worth arguing for instead of giving in on. I also think we live in the convenient world where that won’t be a problem.
All right, I can buy that. Although it may be that a small compromise is possible: taking future people into consideration with a time discount large enough that radically different people won’t muck things up. To be more specific (hence also more hypothetical), current people may insist on taking into account their children and grandchildren but not worry so much about what comes after. (Again, talking about what has to be explicitly included for political reasons, separate from what gets included via the actual utility functions of included people.) This is probably getting too hairsplitting to worry about any further. (^_^)