Surur t1_iu1j3v6 wrote
Lots of people think Musk is just conspiring with China and Russia for money, but I think the real problem is longtermism, which means Musk is prepared to sacrifice millions of Ukraine today to prevent the low risk of nuclear war killing trillions of future people spread around the stars.
While there is a logic to it, I don't think potential people have any rights, and the interest of actual living people outweigh potential future people, else banning contraception would be justified also.
pongvin t1_iu1q8wm wrote
Interesting thought about contraception, but I feel there's an argument to be made that banning it still wouldn't fit the longtermist view because of the high probability of causing suffering for so many unwanted future kids and 'creating' more emotially damaged adults.
Surur t1_iu1r80r wrote
I don't think Longtermism is the same as utilitarianism, as believers in Longtermism believe they can guarantee that the future is better, if they can only control the present, so more people is automatically better.
Their overconfidence is the issue.
[deleted] t1_iu2bxso wrote
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Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu2alk5 wrote
Its not about any guarantees its about maximizing the probability of the best possible future to the best of our ability.
Surur t1_iu3cz0e wrote
Like I said, it's not justified to make the lives of living people worse to improve the lives of unborn people. We don't owe anything to the future, particularly if, as increasingly is the case, people chose not to have children or have children at below the replacement rate.
Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu3hxtq wrote
Yes we do have a responsibility to the future, survival/existence is the prerequisite for anything you could possibly want for humanity besides the death of humanity, thus it should be the priority. Our function as a species is to survive.
Surur t1_iu3isoa wrote
Why should I or anyone else care about the survival of "humanity"? It's just a concept.
Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu3ja7e wrote
Why should you care for the suffering or pleasure of a living human, its just a group of cells or neurons, just a concept.
Look in the end there is no objective reason to care about suffering collective survival or whatever. All morality is made up. The reason I advocate for long term collective survival being maximized is because its the closest thing there is to an objective function for a species.
Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu2atxl wrote
We were potential people at some point, and its not about rights. Its about making sure survival is maximized. The future will exist so better it be one with humans in it than not. Also the fact that there will be exponentially more humans in the future than in the past.
Surur t1_iu3dcja wrote
> The future will exist so better it be one with humans in it than not.
This is neither here nor there for living people. Your actual life will not be measurably improved by people 1000 years from now living the star trek future.
> Also the fact that there will be exponentially more humans in the future than in the past.
If you look at population curves, you can't actually guarantee that. Bayesian logic and the mediocrity principle suggest you are living in the most populated time currently, and in the future, there will be fewer or fewer people, and certainly not quintillions, else why are you one of the very special first 100 billion?
Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iu3ista wrote
This isn't about people living in the present, this is about the existence of humanity over time. I am prioritizing humanity as a collective super organism not as a group of individual organisms.
​
That is wrong for 2 reasons, first assuming that people will always have life spans of about 80 years, given technological development solving immortality is inevitable, second even if we assume limited lifespans the collective lifespans summed over the rest of the life of the universe assuming constant population size is still many many magnitudes larger than the current population size.
Surur t1_iu3s1ne wrote
> assuming constant population size
There is really no reason to assume this. The fact that our population is set to peak suggests decline in the future.
> I am prioritizing humanity as a collective super organism not as a group of individual organisms.
That's your choice. There no real imperative for that.
JKJ420 t1_iu93fuq wrote
> in the future, there will be fewer or fewer people
This only applies to Earth. There will be countless of people living off Earth. At, least we should hope so.
Surur t1_iu93ud7 wrote
Every species goes extinct eventually. Some sooner than others.
JKJ420 t1_iu9o5bd wrote
How did you get to that conclusion? Even if this was true in the past, why would it apply to the future? I am genuinely curious. Not trolling.
Surur t1_iu9pikt wrote
That is not a controversial thing to say.
> The background level of extinction known from the fossil record is about one species per million species per year, or between 10 and 100 species per year (counting all organisms such as insects, bacteria, and fungi, not just the large vertebrates we are most familiar with). In contrast, estimates based on the rate at which the area of tropical forests is being reduced, and their large numbers of specialized species, are that we may now be losing 27,000 species per year to extinction from those habitats alone.
> The typical rate of extinction differs for different groups of organisms. Mammals, for instance, have an average species "lifespan" from origination to extinction of about 1 million years, although some species persist for as long as 10 million years. There are about 5,000 known mammalian species alive at present. Given the average species lifespan for mammals, the background extinction rate for this group would be approximately one species lost every 200 years. Of course, this is an average rate -- the actual pattern of mammalian extinctions is likely to be somewhat uneven. Some centuries might see more than one mammalian extinction, and conversely, sometimes several centuries might pass without the loss of any mammal species.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/2/l_032_04.html
It can of course be summarized in the words "nothing lasts forever".
And as to why it would apply in the future - entropy.
JKJ420 t1_iuc8155 wrote
It's hard to get a conversation going if your go-to answer is the heat death of the universe :-).
OffEvent28 t1_iubvhrs wrote
The issue with longtermism is it allows billionaires to claim they are "speaking for those future trillions" when they ignore the poor of today, or even engineer a genocide today so the likelihood of those future people being born is increased.
The current preachers for longtermism will, of course, make lots of money today while writing and teaching and congratulating the billionaires on how wonderful their plans are.
FilthyCommieAccount t1_iu68ltu wrote
Gonna get banned for wrongthink but... even from a non-longtermism standpoint he's still right though. How about the risk of nuclear war killing billions of the current population? Becuase that's what's being risked right now and if you point out that 2 nuclear powers are in a proxy war and that there's a real chance of a nuclear exchange happening, people think you are somehow deranged. This is our generations cuban missle crisis and there's basically no attempt at diplomacy. It's lunacy.
I take the longtermism stance but having said that there's very good arguments for us getting out of Ukraine to protect billions of current lives.
Surur t1_iu6cyxx wrote
> even from a non-longtermism standpoint he's still right though. How about the risk of nuclear war killing billions of the current population?
Well, the issue is that Putin may kill you if you don't stop him where he is. The example being Hitler of course.
If you appease bullies they become more confident, until someone actually stops them.
If you think that is completely unrealistic, places like Lithuania do not, and remember the whole of Eastern Europe remembers being under occupation by the USSR.
FilthyCommieAccount t1_iu6e44h wrote
The Hitler excuse is extremely overplayed. The truth of the matter is far more complicated and nuanced. Russia tolerated nato expansion towards it's borders for 3 decades and putin for more than one after we promised several times in public to the Russians that we would not do that. No nuclear nation is going to tolerate a hostile aligned military aliance with nukes on its borders. Just imagine what the US would do if China convinced Mexico to join a military aliance...
Basically, this is not some fairy tale good vs evil simple story. This is the real world. We should have allowed Russia to have a nuetral buffer zone between it and NATO not for Russia's sake but for everyone's. The world is a safer place when nonaligned nuclear powers have some territory between them. Like what do you think the endgame is here? Russia legitimately sees this as a large national security threat not becuase of it's bullshit Ukrainian nazi propaganda but becuase it doesn't want to be contained/surrounded by nato. What does everyone think is gonna happen when you corner a nuclear armed country?
Edit: Why do idiots try to send a last message after they block you lol? I can't see your weak ass comeback if you block me.
Surur t1_iu6fwfi wrote
Ah, sorry, I thought you were a pragmatist, but you are just a vatnik repeating Putin's talking points.
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