[ExI] Slavery in the Future

[Lee Corbin]

John Grigg writes

> Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> > If they've been created to do work (i.e. for some purpose), then
> > in my view they belong to their creators. And for me, it's especially
> > unproblematical if aren't suffering, but are rather enjoying it. (And
> > why shouldn't they enjoy it? Even now, drugs are cheap, and
> > there shouldn't be a premium at all on a very pleasant existence
> > in the future for created entities.)
> 
> Oh, my gosh!  I can't believe you said these things! : (  I feel like
> you are advocating the "enlightened" enslaving of genetically
> engineered sentients!  A biological sentient conditioned by drugs
> and/or genetic engineering to enjoy his/her/its slavery (oh, but
> they will never use this word...) is still a slave.  "Oh, brave new world!"      

By "enslave", of course, you don't mean my seizing an already
extant creature who is a member of society---but your reaction
makes me wonder if you or not. This would be *just* about
entities that would never live *but* for my efforts to create them.

Don't forget software you write on equipment that you bought
and paid for, and own. Are we to have a "sentience police" that
runs blueware on your machine just to keep checking up on you
to make sure your programs aren't suffering, and that you won't
allow them to terminate?

The principle is the same. If I concoct some tissue in my own lab
that turns out to be sentient, well, then, IMO it's mine and I can
do with it what I please. Who are you and the goons to come 
into my place and stop me?  Why, that would be almost as bad
as "the authorities" smashing down doors to take children away
from their parents because the authorities don't approve of the
way the children are being medicated by their parents (except,
unfortunately, we already do that).

Respect for individual *rights*, e.g. *my* legal rights, and respect
for the laws of private property have, I say, got us a long way. 
I utterly reject the idea of you, the legislature, and the police
supervising what I do in my own house or in my own laboratory. 

(I do not want to argue people's well-intentioned laws against 
animal cruelty, or any parallel laws against "sentient cruelty".
One thing at a time. After I win this debate, we can go after
those things.)

Meanwhile, what if I devise a machine that can create and 
then obliterate a sentient some twenty thousand times per
second.  If I leave it running a few days, you think that makes
me history's greatest mass murderer? It all gets ridiculous
(unless you look at things exactly like I do).

Lee

P.S.

Oh---okay, sorry for not putting a smiley face after I wrote
that last sentence. To me---I'm being funny. What sort of
person would really *mean* that all views but his are 
ridiculous?   :-)   But experience has proven people can't
see that sort of humor, at least not coming from me.  :-)

P.P.S.  Oh, and that P.S. and this do not contain any
irony. If I live to be a hundred, I won't be able to match
the double and triple levels of the stuff that Damien
throws about with such mastery.