It's the end of the world as we know it

[ciphergoth]

The technical term for a risk that could destroy the whole future of humanity is an "existential risk".

Wikipedia on existential risk

Nick Bostrom: "Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors."

Eliezer Yudkowsky, Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks [PDF]

Google search

Do you worry about the end of the world?

Comments

[emanix.livejournal.com]

I haven't proposed tradeoffs between your lives and theirs anywhere; that's irrelevant to what we're discussing.

Irrelevant to the original topic, sure. I used it as an example of how my world view isn't solipsistic. And I noted that you hadn't proposed it at the time - do keep up! You've ignored the fact that I did answer the question several times, as well.

I have tried to make two points here, firstly that seeing an outcome as bad is not the same as being scared of it, and following on from that, that suffering is more 'scary' than non-existence, I haven't made any value judgements about whether it's more or less 'bad' (of course, rationally, death is 'worse', as it's an irreversible* state as opposed to a potentially reversible one).
Your thought experiment, however, still missed my point. Both are bad, but suffering is simpler to imagine.
I *can't* have nightmares about not existing - after all, I'd remember precisely nothing. The only way to visualise it would be in terms of the effect on people other than myself, or in terms of - oh hey - suffering in the process of moving into that state.

Would I choose death over suffering myself? Maybe, if I thought that the suffering itself was also an irretrievable state. Do I think I have the right to make that choice for anyone else? No.

Let's really simplify this then:
death = bad
bad != scary

Since this is your journal and not mine, I'm not going to to illustrate my entire philosophy here. Maybe I'll get around to it in mine.

*Yeah, I know, cryonics etc. etc. Call it 'less reversible' if you prefer.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I thought about adding it at the time, but that game quickly gets boring. If you're posed with for example a trolley problem, it's just dull to try to evade the parameters of the thought experiment by saying "I leap aboard the trolley and bring it to a halt with a stick" - it's dull to make your counterpart have to specify all that stuff, like that you're too far from the trolley to do such a thing in time. You should make an effort to understand the import of the thought experiment, and not posit objections when you can see for yourself how you might close the doors on those objections.

It's good to see that you recognise that the end of humanity is bad; I hope it leads you to attempt to deliberately correct for the failure of imagination you describe in trying to weight it in your personal moral calculus.

(BTW cryonics people agree that death is irreversible, they just don't agree that legal death is death by that definition)

[emanix.livejournal.com]

*Sigh* I just re-read the whole comment thread, it would have probably been far quicker if I'd just pointed at purplerabbits's comment (up here (http://ciphergoth.livejournal.com/355932.html?thread=3719260#t3719260)) and said 'what she said'.

Import of thought experiment fully understood, but it was still irrelevant to what I was trying to say. I'd love to hear how you manage to imagine not existing, though.

Also, I don't 'recognise' that the end of humanity is bad, since 'bad' is a value judgement and not a statement of fact. I don't believe there is any universal truth that says death = bad, but in my personal opinion, it is.

(BTW cryonics people agree that death is irreversible, they just don't agree that legal death is death by that definition)
Useful to know. Thankyou.