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What We Owe The Future: Difference between revisions
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Per the [[entropy|second law of thermodynamics]] but ''pace'' Pink Floyd, there is but ''one'' possible past, ''one'' possible now, and an infinite array of possible futures stretching out into an unknown black void. Some short, some long, some dystopian, some enlightened. Some cut off by apocalypse, some fading gently into warm [[Entropy|entropic]] soup. | Per the [[entropy|second law of thermodynamics]] but ''pace'' Pink Floyd, there is but ''one'' possible past, ''one'' possible now, and an infinite array of possible futures stretching out into an unknown black void. Some short, some long, some dystopian, some enlightened. Some cut off by apocalypse, some fading gently into warm [[Entropy|entropic]] soup. | ||
William MacAskill’s | William MacAskill’s premise is this: barring near-term cataclysm, there are so many more people in our future than in the present, that our duty of care to this horde of sacred unborn swamps any concern for the here and now. This feels a bit Roman Catholic except Catholics require at least conception before rights arise.when it isn’t feeling like a manifesto for Neo-Calvinism. | ||
Anyhow: we are minding the shop not just for our children and grandchildren but for generations unconceived — in every sense of the word, millennia hence — ''Thousands'' of millennia hence. | |||
MacAskill | MacAskill uses what financiers might call “linear interpolation” to deduce, from what has already happened in the world, a theory about what will happen, and how we should thereby discharge our duty to this as yet unimagined throng. | ||
Before wondering how | Before wondering how the literally unconceived can have priority over those who are already here, the gating question that MacAskill glosses over is this: how do we even know who these putative beings will be, let alone which of their interests are worth protecting? | ||
=== An infinity of possibilities === | === An infinity of possibilities === | ||