From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 30 2002 - 11:46:53 MDT
Rafal writes
> Lee wrote:
>> At some point in the relatively near future, a program will benefit.
>> What do you want to do with the computer resources under your control
>> when the running of certain programs becomes a moral issue? Is it
>> ethical to stop such an execution once it's started? What I definitely
>> do *not* want to happen is for people to never run programs that benefit,
>> simply to avoid the issue of halting them!
### You seem to imply a symmetry applying to the valuation
### of existence in time - the time before you were born is
### as distressing to contemplate as the time after your
### death. This is a rather uncommon idea, which I previously
### found only once, in a story by Stanislaw Lem.
Well, yes, but the main reason that I find a future without me
to be more distressing than the past without me, is that
there is nothing I can do about the latter.
### Personally, I do not mind my past nonexistence, but the
### evolved survival circuitry strongly avoids future nonexistence.
### The arrow time at work. So, it's perfectly fine with me to
### never have a child but it's bad to stop one from running
### (except under a car).
Trying to look at the situation objectively, say from the
point of view of some vast and cool savants a million years
from now, that Rafal S. lived but then died in the 20th and
21st centuries will be much the same as it would have if he
had lived then died in the 11th century. Their perspective,
I believe, is correct. Therefore, it seems logical to
conclude that your non-existence in the 12th century is
as lamentable as your non-existence might be in the 22nd.
Don't you find a logical conflict between your approval of
certain physical events, e.g. run time for Rafal S., taking
place at one spacetime location, and your nonchalance whether
or not they take place at another? It boils down to physics,
after all. How do you resolve that?
Lee
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