[extropy-chat] Transhumanist Ethics

[The Avantguardian]

> And again this argument may be somewhat utilitarian
> for most people but I AM FOREWARNING YOU.

     Actually it isn't all that utilitarian a thing to
do. After all the only thing that truly prevents my
alternative energy scenario from ending terrorism (by
depleting the warchest of the islamic jihad) is that
it would threaten the status quo (read oil barrons).
It would not threaten their lives just the same tired
old source of income that they and their families have
been milking for the past 100 years or so. Hell I have
had to change my vocation several times in my
relatively short life of 33 years. Even if the likes
of the Bush/Cheney oil mafia stopped making another
dime on oil this second, they would have enough money
to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. And
with intelligent reallocation of their assets and
investments, they could live as well or better than
ever before. So from a purely utilitarian point of
view, it is highly logical that the actual lives of
thousands of people, no matter how poor or uneducated,
are worth more then the "convenience" of a super rich
elite handful.
 
> I do have a reasonably good
> background
> however in bioethics and medical ethics.  

What ever happened to "do no harm"? Or is the
Hippocratic Oath something they don't teach in
biomedical ethics anymore?

> I probably need to go to a military or police
> academy
> to understand better what *is* and appropriate level
> of force in specific situations 

Actually I would say that is not the case. In fact
many soldiers and cops are very poor at making
decisions regarding what constitutes appropriate
force. Instead they just do what they are told by
their superiors. If you really want to know the
apporopriate use of military force, read Sun Tzu's
"The Art of War". It does a pretty good job of
logically explaining where, when, how, and why one
should and should not deploy military force.

> For myself -- I do not currently believe that
> everyone
> has the same fundamental right to life. 

This is your biggest problem. It is like a huge
festering sore on your moral character and it is why
you have inflammed and outraged so many list members.
It is not a rationally thought out position, instead
it is your starting premise. It is wrong.
 
> I perform a triage analysis on the current and
> future
> human race.

Your analogy of triage is flawed. Triage is the
allocation of scarce medical resources to those ill
and injured who are most likely to benefit from it.
You speak of taking action against one patient to
benefit another, this is not triage, this is a crime.
it is every bit as ghoulish as choosing to take an
unwilling victim's organs by force to benefit another
person.
     That aside, your analogy of triage is further
flawed because triage requires several things, the
most important of which is sufficent knowledge of the
biology behind life and death to make a valid
prognosis of a patient's fate with or without
treatment. In order to extend this idea to entire
societies, you would need a fundamental understanding
of how healthy societies function, what causes a
society to malfunction, and how much of an impact that
malfunction of the society will have on the future
viability of that society. If you had even a
rudimentary understanding of society, you would not
have made the sociopathic suggestions that you did.
      In order to make judgements about who has more
right to life, even in a strictly utilitarian sense,
between an uneducated Afghani woman and a Western
MD/PhD, requires complete and accurate knowledge of
future events. How do you know for example that the
MD/PhD won't harm people with his research?
Researchers can be biased and clinical trials can be
mistaken. Remember thalidomide? And how do you know
that the Afghani woman's child won't somehow find his
way to the west someday, become educated, and perhaps
cure cancer? If you kill her now, she will never have
the child. I say that EVERYONE has a fundamental right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness until
they by their own actions cause revocation of those
rights.  

=====
The Avantguardian 


"He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind."


	
		
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