[ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring

[Anders Sandberg]

Stefano Vaj wrote:
> Conversely, take Stross's Accelerando. How should we condone the 
> incredibly parochial hostility to what is cavalierly defined the Vile 
> Offspring which is expressed in the last part of the book?

Moral relativists or people viewing value as being a purely social or 
psychological construct  have no problem in accepting the character's 
hostility to the VO. But it might be a correct ethical judgement even if 
there exists an absolute standard for value.

I suspect Stross got the idea partially from Nick Bostrom's paper "The 
future of human evolution" where he discusses scenarios where 
posthumanity evolves into something that completely lacks whatever it is 
that actually gives existence value, for example a very capable and 
expansive civilization where there is no consciousness. (Stross may 
however independently have had a similar idea, there is something 
similar in his early work "Scratch Monkey"). The Vile Offspring might 
simply lack any form of value (moral, aesthetic, etc) and be an 
unstoppable force squeezing out systems that do have value.

Of course, humans or human-derived beings might just parochially think 
anything incompatible with their mode of existence and their values to 
be valueless - it could just as well be that the VO is actually 
fantastically good by some unknown absolute standard (and that the best 
thing any posthuman can do is to help it grow). But it is not obvious 
that a randomly evolved or designed thing must strive towards maximal 
value by this standard (the paperclip maximizer AI is a fine 
counterexample), or even that it is very likely.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute 
James Martin 21st Century School 
Philosophy Faculty 
Oxford University