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On 2015-10-07 22:37, Dan TheBookMan wrote:<br>
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<div>On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 10:29 PM, Anders Sandberg <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:anders@aleph.se">anders@aleph.se</a>>
wrote:<br>
> We do enforce it on children and insane people, often
for their own good. Unfortunately<br>
> we also do do it for other, bad reasons. <br>
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My fear would be the latter, of course, though I'm biased
toward persuasion as opposed to forcing others to change to
fit into some ideal of mine. <br>
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Persuasion works to some extent (just consider the socialization of
children and the fact that most of us do not committ crimes even
when we can get away with it and it is beneficial for us), but the
moral enhancement people have a point in that we have been trying to
persuade people for 2,500 years with limited success. This is where
Steven Pinker's thesis of reduced violence suggests that
organisation and coordination may matter too.<br>
<br>
Of course, one can construct very creepy reinforces of prosocial
behavior. See this article<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/chinas-nightmarish-citizen-scores-are-warning-americans">https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/chinas-nightmarish-citizen-scores-are-warning-americans</a><br>
and the correction/updates in this
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-system-orwellian/">https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-system-orwellian/</a><br>
I have little doubt that something like this could be used to
produce "moral enhancement". <br>
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<div dir="ltr">With regard to Bill's point, what I'm more afraid
of not altering, say, genes, to make people smarter or to think
more long range (i.e., have more willpower to use the
traditional term) -- if such is possible -- but programming
people to do what's now considered a socially appropriate
behavior that involves removing more choices from them. I was
more surprised since, correct me if I'm wrong (Bill or you), but
I thought Bill called himself a libertarian. In which case, I'd
expect him to have some qualms about this -- whether he's a
transhumanist libertarian or no.<br>
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Moral enhancement theorists generally do not think programming
people constitutes "real" moral enhancement, just behavior control.
Sometimes that or nudging is OK, but most of the time it is also
very limited, since it only applies to situations somebody had
thought about beforehand. <br>
<br>
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> And as we argued in my most controversial<br>
> paper ( <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.smatthewliao.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/HEandClimateChange.pdf">http://www.smatthewliao.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/HEandClimateChange.pdf</a><br>
> ) we may want to enforce these things on *ourselves*.<br>
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<div>To be sure, he's arguing for a voluntary change -- though
this is, I presume, voluntary for the parents not the
offspring. My guess with this particular paper is it's
totally unnecessary. And this is the usual argument for
doing something drastic, no? Doom awaits us unless we do X!
:) So, we must do X or suffer the consequences and only a
bad person would be against doing X.<br>
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That is not what we are saying, although I totally understand why
you mention that reading. An awful number of policies are motivated
by a major risk (real or not), and since the policy reduce the risk
then arguing against it seems to be like arguing in favor of the bad
outcome. Hence, less criticism than there should be.<br>
<br>
Climate change is not really bad enough to motivate radical
interventions in humans (even the worst case scenarios span many
decades, where other intervations are more effective), but it might
apply to certain existential risks.<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
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