From: Wei Dai (weidai@eskimo.com)
Date: Sat May 25 2002 - 02:05:28 MDT
On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 02:41:43AM -0400, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> Well, you quoted Phil's assertion that men should be saved before women,
> and you quoted his lifeboat example. You didn't seem to object to the
> idea. All you added was that ancient Romans sometimes valued woman more
> than men if they were breeders for more male soldiers. I must have
> missed the part where you describe men and women being valued equally.
What Lee said was that a woman is more useful than a man in saving
potential people from non-existence. I understand from his other posts
that he considers non-existence to be one of the worst fates anyone could
have.
I think Lee is wrong here, even given his position on non-existence. Most
people raise children in monogamous relationships, and fathers tend to
provide resources to their children in amounts comparable to mothers.
Therefore it does not seem rational to value women above men (or men above
women) on that basis.
Lee seems to imply that he wants people to have as many children as
possible. But if one wants to maximize the number of people who will have
lived from now until the end of the universe, it's not clear that having
as many children as possible is the best strategy to execute. It's
probably better to devote yourself to increasing the wealth and knowledge
of the world, so that the Singularity is brought closer, or the number of
people the world can support in the future is increased.
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