Perhaps there is difference in understanding the subject matter. People intuitively have preferences about things related personally to them: about their friends and relatives (and enemies), about the impact of their work, about their city or nation. But when you say ‘some sort of sapience to keep on living’, it is naturally interpreted as relating to very distant future (1) when nothing of that which they care about exists any more. You may, of course, have preferences relating to such a distant future when humanity is replaced by ‘some sort of sapience’, but many people don’t have (2).
In short, I suspect that “you’ll be dead” isn’t the true reason of their disagreement. It’s rather “nothing you care about now will exist”.
Footnotes:
(1) Distant doesn’t necessarily mean many centuries after present. It’s the amount of change to the world which matters.
(2) Me neither. I can’t “understand” (for lack of a better word) your preferences on the gut level, but I understand that there is no phase transition between your and my preferences, they are in the same class, yours being more general.
Perhaps there is difference in understanding the subject matter. People intuitively have preferences about things related personally to them: about their friends and relatives (and enemies), about the impact of their work, about their city or nation. But when you say ‘some sort of sapience to keep on living’, it is naturally interpreted as relating to very distant future (1) when nothing of that which they care about exists any more. You may, of course, have preferences relating to such a distant future when humanity is replaced by ‘some sort of sapience’, but many people don’t have (2).
In short, I suspect that “you’ll be dead” isn’t the true reason of their disagreement. It’s rather “nothing you care about now will exist”.
Footnotes:
(1) Distant doesn’t necessarily mean many centuries after present. It’s the amount of change to the world which matters.
(2) Me neither. I can’t “understand” (for lack of a better word) your preferences on the gut level, but I understand that there is no phase transition between your and my preferences, they are in the same class, yours being more general.