X-Message-Number: 15197 Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 20:37:28 -0800 From: Lee Corbin <> Subject: Re: To Be or Not to Be Mike Perry wrote in #15187 >I don't agree that making a person rescues that person from nonexistence. >The multiverse idea, to which I subscribe, provides that any given person, >instantiated in some finite construct, *must* come into existence over and >over, and this must follow no matter what any one person or persons may do >either for or against. Of course I can feel gratitude to my parents for the >hard work they did in giving rise to and raising me. But I feel no moral >obligation to follow in their footsteps. I can contribute in other ways to >what I see, overall, as a good thing, namely, the human community, which I >hope to see develop into a community of immortals. I probably agree, if you want to utilize a strict meaning of "exist". But if you consider concrete cases, then your argument falls to the ground. Suppose for the purposes of illustration that a young man and woman are intending to have a large family, but some wacko population control advocate talks them out of it. The woman's father then speaks to them as follows: "Suppose that you do go ahead and have six children. Try as hard as you can to imagine these people. Such fine young people as you are most likely to have children that will richly enjoy and appreciate life. Does the ghost of Christmas future have to come and take you to the future where you meet these children? Imagine them laughing, living, and loving, and now imagine them fading away because you chose not to have them." The grandfather is exactly right. A whole lot of bad decisions are made because people do not have the imagination to see the probable future. (I hardly need remind a cryonicist of this!) If a potential murderer could only see the subsequent funeral that he is going to cause to take place---the grieveing parents, the grieving children and spouse---in many cases he would think twice. The same goes with people living or not living. Cryonicists especially have the ability to see that life is better than death---always better, in fact, except in those extremely rare cases where life is not worth living. And to invoke the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics to rationalize that some people might as well not be born (here) is mere sophistry. It's an after the fact rationalization that is slightly akin to people saying, "well, that people or those people should never have been born". Now, I am NOT saying that failing to conceive children is in any way tantamount to murder. That would be an egregious misuse of the term, much as many pro-life people misuse the term with regard to abortion. "Murder" has the sematic links that it has for very good reasons: to name a few, we must guarantee citizens the right to remain unmolested by others; laws exist in every society to protect people from murder; for one citizen to take the life of another clearly violates the golden rule. Neither abortion nor "failing to conceive" fits these. >Not creating a life is not as bad as destroying one that is >already here, assuming we are talking about a sentient creature. We agree, for the reasons that I have just given. But it is still a better universe that has life than one that does not, it is still a better world that has many people than one that does not. If you doubt this, I recommend you read Dominic LaPierre's "The City of Joy". He illustrates (for those of us, like me and like almost everyone, who has inadequate imagination), that the lives of even the poorest of the poor in Calcutta are very rich and well worth living. (Some rich Americans cannot stand the though of being that poor and mistakenly believe that anyone that poor must be suffering the way that they would suffer. This mistake is partly, but not entirely, due to sheer arrogance. To be sure, this does not imply in any way that these peoples lives cannot be radically improved. All our lives can be radically improved. See http://www.hedweb.com ) >(Not all abortions are of sentient creatures, however.) If my >parents hadn't made me, yes, I wouldn't be here, but I would, >once again, be somplace else, if the multiverse idea is correct. This violates the Many Worlds Normalization Principle. In particular, if some dreadful person had got to your parents and persuaded them not to have children, or if your mother was struck by a car and could not conceive, it would be the worse for you in many, many worlds. In fact, it would be the worse for all of us. Lee Corbin Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15197