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That was Big Yud at his most sympathetic?
I dunno, I just can't put myself in that mindset. I think it's probably because I don't really like anyone currently alive very much, so I don't feel "thousands of deaths of sentient people every minute" as a thousand tiny knives stabbing at my soul. People are a renewable resource! Sure, some will die, but, no big loss: basically identical ones will take their place.
...until they don't, because mankind wholesale gets paperclipped. At THAT, I feel Yud's doomer schizo panic.
Ah yes, «people are the new oil».
I like people. A few of them very much so, and many more at least a bit. My sympathy is egoistic: people are the set of beings to which I belong. I am a history and a world unto myself, and a particular take on the universe that we share. Others are the same. We are similar in nature and in scope, but unique in a way that needs no justification – unique like numbers are. So every death is a catastrophe, every death immiserates the sum of reality that remains.
Trivializing this with childish cynicism is, to my eyes, merely a petition to be excluded from that set of valuable beings. If you do not see yourself as an entity of immense worth, I can understand not extending the same courtesy to others.
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(this is not my view, I don't like this longtermist pascal mugging spree people have just rolled over for. HUmanist allthe way, bayyy beee)
Why do you give a shit?
All those future humans are the same boring assholes you don't feel anything for right now.
An infinitely large pile of garbage might be impressively massive, but it's still garbage.
If you are truly selfish, better to be the last human on earth, enjoying the fruits of the most modern economies of production right up until you get turned into computational substrate.
I don't think most people roll over for a pascals mugging. Most EA/LW people believe there's a high probability that humanity can make transformative AGI over the next 15/50/100 years, and with a notable probability that it won't be easily alignable with what we want by default.
I'm skeptical that I'd agree with calling longtermism a pascals mugging (it has the benefit that it isn't as 'adversarial' to investigation and reasoning as the traditional pascals mugging), but I'm also skeptical that it is a loadbearing part. I'd be taking roughly the same actions whether or not I primarily cared about my own experience over the next (however long).
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Because my not encountering anyone interesting in the thousand or so people I've met in my 30 or so years of living at the turn of the 21st century, does not mean that humanity couldn't produce anyone interesting in the 10^90 transhuman people who could exist across the next trillion years of seizing the cosmic endowment.
Welcoming the paperclipper because people are boring in 2023 is analogous to suiciding yourself because you're a kissless virgin at 16. There is still plenty of time for the situation to improve, provided you stay alive.
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