I very much like the focus on reducing suffering rather than increasing happiness. But I didn't understand some points, like, why does he think that we are the only sentient beings in the universe (there are good arguments that it is hugely likely that there are other civilizations) and that this matters so crucially - as if there is a moral obligation to keep humanity (or future humanity) existing forever, while it is clear that sooner or later humanity will go extinct, and in the end all complexity (incl. life) in the universe will be gone..
he's spent a lot of a career thinking about "population ethics" and future possible outcomes for mankind and their ethical weight... since there's a great span of time in the future even for earth's viability--maybe a billion years until the sun explodes--then climate change or a nuclear apocalypse might prevent the goodness of a billion year's worth of people existing in lives worth living, which is an unfathomable number of people. it's not a moral obligation to keep humanity going per se, but to future people in his view.
What the arse is he talking about? 'filling the universe with people living much better lives than those lived today'... that really means nothing, even to people who think Star Trek is serious. The professor of cobblers...
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the camera person is a loud breather
Is there a transcript of this talk? Even one auto-generated by youtube would be helpful
I very much like the focus on reducing suffering rather than increasing happiness. But I didn't understand some points, like, why does he think that we are the only sentient beings in the universe (there are good arguments that it is hugely likely that there are other civilizations) and that this matters so crucially - as if there is a moral obligation to keep humanity (or future humanity) existing forever, while it is clear that sooner or later humanity will go extinct, and in the end all complexity (incl. life) in the universe will be gone..
he's spent a lot of a career thinking about "population ethics" and future possible outcomes for mankind and their ethical weight... since there's a great span of time in the future even for earth's viability--maybe a billion years until the sun explodes--then climate change or a nuclear apocalypse might prevent the goodness of a billion year's worth of people existing in lives worth living, which is an unfathomable number of people. it's not a moral obligation to keep humanity going per se, but to future people in his view.
The camera man breaths so loud I couldn't listen to this whole thing. Only made it to 15 minutes.
So is this Philosophy or Philosophology?
What the arse is he talking about? 'filling the universe with people living much better lives than those lived today'... that really means nothing, even to people who think Star Trek is serious. The professor of cobblers...