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Notes -
Why not kill a sleeping human? Generally for all the same reasons that those around them want them to exist when they're awake. The world would be lessened by the world's own metrics, and the survivors would evolve to stop each other from killing sleeping humans. The policy of killing sleeping humans is structurally unstable in a way that Kant would shake his finger at, and the opportunity cost of stabbing them vs waking them up is large and immediate.
It's all very contingent upon how reality actually works mind you. If we could kill and re-spawn a human with little cost like in a video game- then the conditions would be different. The consequences are much lesser, therefore a social policy that encourages this behavior is more stable. We are actually seeing the beginnings of such a world coming out of character AI. People that can fork themselves need place much less meaning on death. Dead people are effectively still alive and fictional people are effectively real if you really can just spin them up and talk to them at any time.
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