[extropy-chat] Engineered Religion

[john-c-wright at sff.net]

Samantha writes:
>I wasn't using "engineered" in the sense of "totally made up" as you seem to 
have taken my remark.

Your point is well taken. I misunderstood the thrust of your comments. You are
describing an evolutionary or adaptive process, which is not the way I am used
to using the word engineer. The mistake is mine. 

Ben Writes:
> How do you get from "we must instruct our children in the basic rules of
> morality" to "what religion do we teach the intelligent machines in the 
> early days, before they are independent?" ?

Oh, don't get me wrong. I think the rules of morality are objective, obvious,
and written into the structure of reality. Every philosophy and every civilized
religion tends toward the same universal conclusion. I do not think religion is
necessary for morality. (I do think it is necessary for salvation, but that is
another topic). 

If it turns out that morality is not objective, I doubt that the transhumanist
project is feasible. If the minds superior to ours cannot find a common ground
of moral behavior, then they will merely be minds like ours, with our own flaws
and passions writ large: devils. The minds will diverge in their goals and
struggle with each other, perhaps war. Resources will still be scarce to them,
compared with their ambitions and their powers, and, lacking a common moral
code, the competition for scarce resources, or for prestige or power, will turn
deadly. If, on the other hand, morality turns out to be objective, all the
super-intellects will consult game theory, and the rules of economics, and
deduce that cooperative competition is better than violent conflict.   

> Are you making the common mistake of assuming that morality can only 
> come from religion? (with the implication that non-believers are amoral, 
> if not immoral)

God forbid that I should ever say such a thing! All men have a conscience, and
religion is no guarantee that a man will not deafen himself to it. 

> It's 'belief' that causes the problems. It's belief that tells you that 
you are right and he is wrong, regardless of any evidence or facts.

There are two ways a drunk can fall off a horse, to the left and to the right.
Likewise, there are two ways a man can fail in his intellectual honesty: one is
by being too credulous, and the other is by being so skeptical that his
faculties are paralyzed. I can think of many beliefs that do not cause the
problem you mention.  

> Agnostics are prey to fads and lunacies?!?
> But the whole POINT of agnosticism is it *protects* you from fads and 
> lunacies!

I am in the wrong here. Agnostics are not any more prone to fads than atheists
and theists. My thought when I wrote that passage was that atheists would be
controlled by reason, and theists by tradition, and so would tend to be slow to
change their belief, except unless they had evidence (in the case of atheists)
or a magesterium (in the case of theists) to govern the change. But this merely
defines the rate of change, not the degree of change, nor the quality of the new
belief. I retract the comment. 

>"No offense meant to respected agnostic brethren, but it is state of 
mind where the wondering of man finds no rest." This is a bad thing? the
'wondering of man' is what has driven us to become what we are. Stop the
wondering and you stop progress. When you stop wondering, it's time to buy a
teapot-shaped hat and start killing everybody who denies the absolute truth of
what's written in this here <insert name of 'holy book'>.

Again, there are two ways to fall off a horse. I was not recommending the
strangulation of progress; I was merely wary of the inability of those men who
are not loyal to a specific rule of evidence to come to definite conclusions.
One too many of the agnostics I know are multiculturalists, of the kind who
cannot decide whether or not cannibalism is bad, because they will not say
living as an American doctor is better or worse than living as a Maori
headhunter. When I say they cannot find rest, I mean that they will not make up
their minds, even when the evidence is in. 

The atheists I know are Objectivists, who are zealous moralists. The Objectivist
argument is that capitalism, the rational live of man, is the only moral way to
live. The theists I know are moralists to a lesser degree. My Witch friends are
a relaxed and cheerful live-and-let-live bunch: but, lurking in the background
(and sometimes in the foreground) of their thought, is the idea that there is a
right way to live, and that harm done others returns sevenfold. So my personal
experience was that agnostics were indecisive. It is not necessary a general rule. 

And I owned my teapot-shaped hat long before I became a Christian. I have not
yet received any orders from the Papal Mind Control satellite to go kill anyone.
In fact, my last instructions from the home office were to turn the other cheek
when struck and give my money to the poor. I will check with HQ and get back to
you on that whole killing thing. 

>A religious AI is probably my worst nightmare.

If the machines are logical beings, and actually live up to the doctrines
sinning mortals preach, it might not be so bad. I suppose it depends on the
religion. A Buddhist machine who practices ahimsa, absolute respect for all
life, is not the very worst nightmare I can imagine.