Arbitrarily decide who benefits (was Re: Bounded population)

From: Tim Freeman (tim@fungible.com)
Date: Mon Apr 14 2008 - 08:00:35 MDT


From: "Nick Tarleton" <nickptar@gmail.com>
>My point is that the goal system of an FAI is not arbitrary - it's
>tightly constrained by our current values and the values implicit in
>the changes we would make to ourselves, and can't be arbitrarily
>tinkered with to resolve paradoxes without serious thought.

It seems to me that some essential features of the FAI are arbitrary.
The most important arbitrary feature I can see, for the purpose of
getting a political consensus to build the thing, is who benefits.
The set of entities that benefit might be all presently-existing
humans, or it might be some smaller set of human individuals, or it
might be all mammals, or one of many other possible choices. Does
anyone see a strategy for bringing rationality to bear on this
decision? Otherwise it's arbitrary and there will probably be a
tedious and depressing political battle over it.

-- 
Tim Freeman               http://www.fungible.com           tim@fungible.com


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