[extropy-chat] I keep asking myself...

[Russell Wallace]

On 4/5/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> My copies start to accumulate different information on top of a very large
> foundation of information I handed directly to them and they are presumably
> executing upon a substrate I provided for them as well (unless society as a
> whole is handing out "free" computronium for "colonization" [think New
> England ~400 years ago]).
>

I think Emlyn has that one right: if for whatever reason you want to abuse
copies of yourself, sign an agreement for said abuse up front, then let them
be created in such a way that nobody knows which is the original and which
is the copy, then flip a coin for the designations. That way any harm comes
to someone (you!) who has agreed to it, so you're not violating the moral
principle that it's wrong to abuse sentient beings against their will.

In *this* society perhaps.  But I see little difference between sending a
> "crippled" human, e.g. an engineered berserker, off to war and a designed
> and manufactured robot with human (or even superhuman) levels of
> intelligence off to war or into a reactor melt-down "hot-zone".
>

Sentient robots should be treated with the respect due sentient beings. If
you want disposable machines to fight battles, fix nuclear reactors etc, a
simple solution is to make them nonsentient narrow AIs; this isn't
hypothetical, we get good mileage out of primitive versions of it today.

But since one of the CSPAN channels last night was playing back the
> testimony of some government official involved in the "crusade" against
> child-porn on the internet its fresh in my mind... and let me explicitly
> state I'm *intentionally* tweeking list members who think they are sitting
> on the moral "high" ground... What is wrong with my creating a society with
> children engineered to never grow old (not too difficult as some of the
> genes which would produce some of these effects are already known) and whose
> "raison d'etre" was to sit around and experience pleasure when being diddled
> by older folks?  Of course this would be done in my Atlantean cities
> floating in international waters, or perhaps because that meme set would
> offend most of the people on the planet, on a moon orbiting Jupiter.
> Wouldn't you feel compelled to enroll others into taking action to stamp out
> this kind of abhorent activity ( i.e. to replace my meme set where the
> engineering of perpetually young people in support of the "Religion of IPIP"
> is considered a normal church activity with an alternate meme set supporting
> the "Religion of not abusing conscious matter"?
>

I answered the "nuke Mecca" proposal at some length last time it came up,
did you get my reply that time? But yes, if the practical circumstances were
similar then I think similar moral and ethical logic would apply. (In other
words, the fact that it's more politically correct to respect other people's
religion than sexual habits should not in and of itself be a moral
distinguishing factor - I agree you have a valid point as far as that goes.)

(Though I'm not sure that is quite right as it would suggest that its ok for
> one to fiddle the "children" so long as they are asleep and they don't know
> one is doing it.)
>

Again, if you want entities you can abuse with a clear conscience, create
nonsentient narrow AI robots or simulations.

The interesting thing about the "Extropians List" is that at least most of
> the people involved consciously signed up for having their minds fiddled
> with... :-;
>

Fair point :)
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