Re:NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Suc...
by hackinthebochs on Saturday January 14, 2023 @05:58PM
(#34384973)
>I'm not sure there’s solid argument for why one is more deserving of existence than the other.
I think an existence bias is defensible. Take it as an axiom that suffering is bad and flourishing is good. I think its clear that the suffering of something that exists is worse than the lack of flourishing of something that doesn't exist but could. Value is something that conscious creatures do, and so value depends on existence. The states of something that can prefer its own states should be valued over the states of something that can't. Existing fish matter more than rocks and potential fish. So the organisms that exist, at least the sentient ones, should take preference.
I think an existence bias is defensible. Take it as an axiom that suffering is bad and flourishing is good. I think its clear that the suffering of something that exists is worse than the lack of flourishing of something that doesn't exist but could. Value is something that conscious creatures do, and so value depends on existence. The states of something that can prefer its own states should be valued over the states of something that can't. Existing fish matter more than rocks and potential fish. So the organisms that exist, at least the sentient ones, should take preference.