[ExI] moral guidance please: was Anders on io9

[Anders Sandberg]

spike <spike66 at att.net> , 8/2/2014 6:05 AM:


  

 

Behalf Of Adrian Tymes


 

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 5:35 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

Ethics hipsters, guidance please?

>…Don't.  Straight-up no.  You'd be having laughs - *just* laughs - at the expense - and it is an expense, in stress and hassle if nothing else - of someone with whom you have no prior involvement…

 

Thanks Adrian.  As I recall you were on the strictly puritan end of the spectrum last time something like this came up.  Other opinions?
I think Adrian is roughly right. Pure Schadenfreude is not nice. However, the nobility angle does seem to improve things: if greedy or malicious people get their comeuppance because of their own base behaviour, it is just and far more enjoyable to laugh at. This is why I think the joke needs a second stage: if it was just fooling some people that there was an idiot to laugh at, then there is not much fun. But if some actually try to exploit it... then I think there is potential to reel them in into hilarity. Just consider those amusing cases where people have trolled Nigeria-scammers: turning the tables is fun.
I think the full joke would be more like an alternate reality game: reeling in those too greedy, stupid or malicious to see the joke into an ever crazier world of uptight British blue-bloods and their antics. Have them receive an email from Cumbert Winterbottom esq., the lawyer representing good old Adalbert Throckmorton, asking if they could witness in the upcoming court case... soon followed by an amendment, that Certain People Who Must Not Be Named have demanded that it go all the way to the Star Chamber. Meanwhile the nephew James K. Throckmorton-Cunningham, never the sharpest knife in the drawer, is apparently trying to get his buddies in the hunting team together to restore family honour... but don't worry, he is unlikely to cross the Atlantic. Or at least he is going to be distracted by his jet-set friends and end up in Aruba. Oh, he *does* have a townhouse in <nearby big town>... don't worry.


Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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