From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 14:52:43 MDT
On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 09:44:23PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>
> I'm arguing that self-preservation (or lack thereof) are intrinsically
> outside of the ratio-domain. Why is going on living better than dying,
> rationally? You can't answer that, without taking resort to an axiom
> anchored outside of the realm of rationality. Unless your definition of
> rationality includes these axioms, which is quite arbitrary.
I think Rand made a very clever point here (maybe her best, IMHO): there
might not be any good reason to choose existence over non-existence, but
once you make that choice for whatever reason a lot of consequences
follows. That life is better than non-life might not be an axiom, but
all living beings have ancestors that followed it and will follow it (if
they don't, they will usually quickly become non-living). As I see it it
is a kind of nearly trivial prerequisite a la the anthropic principle -
we are for life because we are alive.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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