[ExI] Slavery in the Future

[Kevin Freels]

Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 10:34 AM, John Grigg
> <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> 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!"
>>     
>
> ### The condition of slavery may be said to exist when the legitimate
> self-ownership interest of a person is infringed on by violent means.
> A self-ownership interest is created when a sentient process develops
> a desire to control its own goal-oriented behavior. If a sentient
> process never develops a desire to control its destiny, it does not
> own itself, and therefore it is legitimate for another process to take
> control. If no self-ownership interest is infringed on, slavery cannot
> exist. Are you following the reasoning? Since my laptop does not (to
> the best of my knowledge) have a desire to control its destiny, it's
> perfectly fine for me to use it as I see fit, no matter how smart the
> laptop is (say it's a 2029 model, last upgrade before the singularity,
> with 1000 petaflops and 64 000 cores). The same applies to biological
> constructs.
>
> Rafal
>
>   
Right on, Rafal. No matter how self-aware something is, if it can't 
claim ownership of itself, it is OK to own it. My dog has a mind of his 
own from time to time and no one ever complains when he brings me the 
paper. Why? Because he's been conditioned to choose to get the paper. 
He's happy to do it. SO far I've never been called a slave driver. 
People think it's neat. :-)

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