This is something I think about a lot. The most important is to keep things going. Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side. The only reason we’ve had all this wealth and ease to squander is because of those who went before us.
I am hugely optimistic about humanity and technology and believe we will get through this just fine. I say this to qualify my question here:
Our descendants might have terrible lives for a thousand generations and it would be worth it if it means humanity can get to better times on the other side.
Would it be worth it? There is likely no net loss for the universe if we or even the entire Earth disappeared overnight and that might be better than thousands of generations suffering painfully over thousands of years.
I have sorrow and compassion for all humans who have had a hard life, but I don't feel any obligations either to or from my ancestors.
I was questioning your assertion that centuries of "terrible lives" (which, to me, seems a regression for most) would be an acceptable price to pay for "better times" later on. Compared to the past 1000 years where life has, in the main, improved gradually generation after generation, I feel this assertion at least deserves to be questioned.
Terrible life is always better than no life because the person living it has the choice to kill themselves. If it lasts 1000s of generations, then obviously they will have chosen life, so it's worth giving it to them.
Why do you think suffering is worse than not existing? If they find their suffering to be unbearable they can end their lives, But unlike us they will have more information to make such a decision. With suffering they have a chance to at least achieve something, so we should not be ones deciding to discard their lives.
If I have two children and do not wish to have a third, should I feel any guilt for the hypothetical "discarded" child's inability to experience life? I contend that as they will never exist, I have no obligation towards them.
If you have resources to support the third child, and you chose to not spend them on the child, you should feel some guilt for slowing down the progress of humanity. There is limited time until a meteorite hits the earth, or CO2 runs out, or some other life ending event happens on earth, and the more people live until that, the more possibilities we will be able to explore leading to higher likelihood that we discover new science and art increasing liveable space and improving everyone's life.
If you look at the history, every discovery was made due to very rare and specific combination of factors, and the only way to create such combinations is by trying many life paths in parallel.
> If you have resources to support the third child, and you chose to not spend them on the child, you should feel some guilt for slowing down the progress of humanity.
Perhaps concentrating attention on two children makes it that much more likely that they will have longer, fulfilling lives, and grace us with their eventual wisdom, rather than all three grubbing in the rubble of a collapsed civilization.
Sure, the odds of either path don't change much based on the single decision of whether to have another child, but every little bit helps, right?
Any cell can become a human if it is placed in a favorable environment. My argument is not about intrinsic value of sperm cell, fetus, or a newborn, my argument is about maximizing the amount of life in general. Every human alive by simply pursuing his own selfish goals, makes lives of everyone else better, by increasing the usefulness of research.
There is no other side. We've used all of the easily-accessible high-energy-density resources on the planet -- once technology drops below the critical level necessary to produce wind/solar/hydro/nuclear, we'll never be able to recover a high-energy society. We'll never get off the earth, let alone out of the solar system. And even if we waited millions of years, bacteria has learned to digest lignin, so there will never be another Carboniferous Period.
