Today is my little brother's birthday. Unfortunately, he only survived outside the womb for two hours. He was born in 1975 premature, before his lungs were fully developed, and although the doctors fought valiantly to get him breathing, he wasn't able to hang on. If he'd have been born today, chances are he'd have made it easily, but that's the different between tech then and now.

His story informs my ethics quite a bit: Those doctors fought for David's life not because he showed up having anything to offer anyone, and not because he said or did anything valuable in the past. It wasn't because he was conscious before, and they weren't trying to save his past heartbeats or breaths for his posterity. I don't even know if David ever reached what we would call consciousness.

The reason they fought for his life is written in every day between then and now, with David not in it. The reason to fight for anyone's life isn't what they do in the past, that stuff's already immutable. The reason to fight on their behalf is what they might do in the future, if not for that future, curtailed. You and I can only possibly be valuable if we have potential in that future, and to deny this is to deny everything you could possibly hold dear. If you have no potential to hold it dear itfp, then you go in a box in the ground. Within living human potential, and only within human potential, is every experience left to you in this realm.