From: Randall Randall (randall@randallsquared.com)
Date: Fri May 14 2004 - 10:49:28 MDT
On May 14, 2004, at 9:54 AM, Pablo Stafforini wrote:
> Randall said:
>> Unless you are intelligent enough to closely simulate that
>> person, however (and no human currently is), you are unlikely
>> to be able to make such a determination, so you must accept
>> the person's own decisions as the closest approximation to
>> their "best interest" that you can find.
>
> I'm not opposing a person's decisions with the decisions of an external
> observer. I'm opposing the person's present decisions with her own
> future ones. When you talk about accepting the person's own decisions
> you seem to ignore that those decisions involve a whole *range* of
> preferences -- a temporal range which projects into the future. If the
> decision the person takes in the present contradicts the decision the
> person will take in the future, you are not "accepting" the person's
> decision when you accept her present one. On the contrary, you are
> arbitrarily giving absolute importance to a single point in the segment
> that represents the temporal dimension of the person's interests (=
> goal
> system/etc.).
Okay, here is the problem, then: I don't view t77-Gambler as the
same person (for decision-making purposes) as t1-Gambler. They are
distinct entities, morally, since t77-Gambler may or may not even
exist, so far as t1-Gambler knows. t77-Gambler's preferences may
be discounted somewhat, or even greatly, by t1-Gambler, and I think
it is a mistake to gainsay that discount.
-- Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com> 'I say we put up a huge sign next to the Sun that says "You must be at least this big (insert huge red line) to ride this ride".' -- tghdrdeath@hotmail.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Feb 21 2006 - 04:22:35 MST