Someone is wrong on the internet!

[llennhoff]

Lured by a metaquotes post, I was browsing through the antitheism community. I found an example of bad reasoning (in support of a conclusion I agree with *sigh*). I went to post a reply when I discovered that the community only allows members to post. So I thought I would post it here instead:

I saw this question posed in one of the threads from your

Comments

[psychohist]

I don't think it's just the utility functions - or at least not in the sense you're looking at. I think the correct comparison in my last comment is not so much between the kid and my embryos as between the embryos and myself. Let's make it one's own kid, and let's take the following three cases:

1. Get out yourself, with no kid and no embryos, with 100% certainty.
2. Get out yourself, with the kid and no embryos, with 3% certainty; but there's a 97% chance you'd both die (maybe the kid's in a room that's already burning and you'd have to go after him).
3. Get out yourself, with the embryos and no kid, with 90% certainty, but there's a 10% chance you and the embryos would die.

Your comments seem to indicate that for you, 1 > 2 > 3. For me, it would be 3 > 2 > 1. This isn't so much a difference in the value placed on the child as a difference in the relative values placed on oneself and one's embryos.

And frankly, if the kid was a stranger, and the embryos were strangers, but with the probabilities I list, I think I'd pick 3 where you would pick 1. We'd both leave the kid to burn, but I'd take a chance to save other peoples' embryos. That wouldn't be a favor to the embryos, though - it would be a favor to those other people.

I don't think that's because I'm more self sacrificing. It might be because I value quality of life - in this case, of the people whose embryos they are - more and you value amount of life - 1 vs .9 vs .06 - more. Most likely, though, I think it's a difference in perception about what embryos really are.

And while I agree with you that actual human life has more value than potential human life, I do think there's some difference in our perceptions when I look at the phrase "especially since in the majority of cases future embryos can be generated whereas the kid cannot be resurrected". It took us 3 years to get to the point where we even got one embryo. That's actually more than the time it took us to get from embryos to a kid. Most couples who actually generate embryos that get frozen have fairly severe infertility. It's not really that easy to regenerate embryos, so I don't think that statement has more validity than one of the form, "especially since in the majority of cases one can have another kid, but ...".

To put it another way, suppose you're a pregnant woman, and your choice is between saving this unrelated kid but miscarrying, or getting out with your pregnancy intact but without the kid. Most people would say it's fine for the woman to favor her pregnancy. But where does the pregnancy start? What if it's only the first trimester? What if the embryo is inside her but hasn't implanted yet? Still okay for her to be careful, right? What if the embryo is still on the outside, but is due to be transferred into her next week? Technically the pregnancy has started already, since it's dated from the time of her last period, which has already happened. Assuming you don't think IVF is morally wrong in the first place, how is that different?

Now, if the 500 embryos are due to be discarded, yeah, I'd ignore them. But I think there's a big difference between embryos due to be discarded, and embryos that the parents still hope to use. And much as I think stem cell research is fine, I wouldn't support requiring parents to give their embryos up for research if they don't want to.

[llennhoff]

I'll need time to digest this, but I have to admit my ignorance that it can take 3 years to get viable embryos. I thought the hard part was getting them reimplanted. Thanks for the education, and my apologies to Elizabeth - I understand her comment much better now.

[psychohist]

Hopefully it will be faster next time, as we can skip some things we now know don't work. Of course, that's balanced by the fact that the chances go down very rapidly with age at Elizabeth's age.

[llennhoff]

I'd suspect my own choices would go 1 3 2 but I have had few enough life endangering crises to be confident in predicting my behavior. Make it a kid instead of the embryos in case 3 and my guess would be 3 1 2. I'm sorry, but 3% chance is too low, especially given the huge error bar in my evaluating the fire. Maybe if my wife and mother were dead I would think differently.

Note that I tend to think immortality through memes is more satisfying than immortality through genes, though I would love the chance to make the comparison. :<( Ultimately I guess I have to go with Woody Allen "Some seek immortality through their kids, others through their art. I'd rather be immortal by never dying."

[psychohist]

Sorry, I hadn't been thinking about the situation with respect to other people who depend on one. An objectively rational choice would probably put 2 last in either case.

Edit: I don't think of it so much as an immortality thing as a "what do I want to do with my life" thing. I don't think immortality by not dying is going to come in time for us, though Margaret has some chance - I think people have a good chance to figure out how to do it around 2060 or so.