Preserving order of the universe a bad idea?

[Devils_Advocate]

At the end of the day, I think that preserving anything about the universe has to be compared to the alternatives in order to reach a sensible judgment. Hopefully we can all agree on that.

aje8 makes a valid point. Often, moral dilemmas will be given with the stipulation, either explicit or implied, "Assume that you are acting with perfect knowledge of the situation and are justifiably certain of everything that I'm about to say. Even though there's no conceivable way that that could be true". Maybe, just for fun, we should try not doing that this time.

OK, the Auditors and the Doomguard I know, but where are Proteans from?

Ending the universe in this stage is committing so much genocide on such a massive scale that there are not words to describe it. You kill the possibility of life in an infinite number of universes by attempting to keep this one active for as long as you can - which destroys the system.

Contraception isn't murder. There are important similarities; for example, in each case someone would have been alive but instead isn't. But there are also important differences; for example, killing someone without his permission is coercive, but bringing a new mind into existence is also coercive, as consciousness is forced onto the created individual without its consent. (One could perhaps get around this by designing a mind to be consenting to its existence at the moment that it began operation.) Both the similarities and the differences should be given proper ethical consideration.

Personally, I'd go find the fracker that started that cycle in the first process (especially if it required me going outside of Reality) and kick his ass until he made it Not Work That Way. Is no such guy exists, I'd find a way to Make There Be A Guy and then kick his ass.

Or failing that, permenantly destroy the entire of Reality up to and including whatever causes it to reboot and start from scratch.

I like the way you think, my good sir.

If there's a Creator, It has a heck of a lot to answer for.

Or is being evil consist of being more than just selfish, but being selfish enough to not care about anyone else?

Selfishness is not caring about anyone else. And it's Neutral, not Evil. (Evil means trying or at least wanting to harm others.)

Trying to stop the eventual end of the universe is kind of like trying to make every being in the universe immortal. You are trying to stop a fundamental law of the universe. Sure it may be possible with epic fantasy powers but it is about as much of an abomination as creating undead. Things end, people die, our time passes. These are fundamental facts that shape life, existence and morality. Even elves must face mortality long before the universe does.

I don't believe it is heroic to stop the Big Crush. But then, maybe I have too many class levels in Druid and not enough in Paladin.

"If God had not meant for there to be a smallpox, Dr. Jenner, he would not have placed it upon the Earth."

Natural laws do not need to be enforced. They are not the sort of rules that can be violated. They describe how things do happen. Were a violation of the conservation of momentum to be discovered, that would simply demonstrate that conservation of momentum is not an absolute, universal law. By definition. A working perpetual motion machine would not be immoral simply because it would violate well-established scientific consensus. The notion is absurd.

So I think that the proper response to that criticism -- one that E.J. actually faced, if I'm recalling a biography of him correctly -- is that if God doesn't want smallpox to be eliminated, then it won't be. And that if God didn't want anyone to try to get rid of it, then he wouldn't be doing that. Indeed, there rather seems to be an inherent problem with the notion of defying the will of an omnipotent being. Or a fundamental law of the cosmos, if you prefer. We are part of the universe; we do not interfere in it from outside of it.

Human beings are sort of distinguished by a tendency to not idly allow things to take their course. We build, we rule, we control, we alter. We attempt to reshape the world according to our will. Sometimes these efforts are misguided. But not to the extent that civilization is inherently bad.

"If you take common sense and rigorously apply it, through multiple inferential steps, to areas outside everyday experience, successfully avoiding many possible distractions and tempting mistakes along the way, then it often ends up as a minority position and people give it a special name."
– Eliezer Yudkowsky