[extropy-chat] Playing Go & demandingness in ethics

Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Thu Jan 5 21:27:20 UTC 2006


On 1/5/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 5, 2006, at 6:54 AM, Jef Allbright wrote:


<snip> // section which seemed to be in general agreement

> > Consistency is the ultimate measure of morality, but we
> > can only approach and never reach that level of objectivity (and
> > gladly so, because then our subjective values would be nil.)
>
> Who says that consistency is the ultimate measure of morality?

Agents with poor internal models behave erratically.  With increasing
awareness comes increasing consistency, in the sense that actions
increasingly corresponding to expected outcomes, evaluated in
increasing detail.


> Consistency within what context and acknowledged limitations?  What
> sort of morality?  I don't think 2000+ year old prescriptions drilled
> into us long before we could intellectually resist memetic plaques
> qualify as any sort of morality that rational people should be
> worrying themselves about.


Of course I would not make the assertion you are arguing against here.


<snip>  // more general agreement

>
> > These values and the actions they imply, like all others, are "good"
> > to the extent that they work to promote increasingly shared values
> > into the future.
>
> Why is it important that the values be shared?  Particularly as some
> humans seriously augment it is very unlikely that most humans will
> even understand >human values in any real depth much less share them.

I think the confusion here is that you must be clear that there is no
absolute right or wrong, because any such judgment must be relative to
subjective values. "Morality" as popularly understood is incoherent
except within an artificially narrow context.  For a lone individual,
morality does not even apply, but as more people agree that some
action is "right", we begin to call that "moral" action.


<snip>  // more agreement


> > Certain values become increasingly shared because they work, meaning
> > they persist and grow.  These increasingly shared values are the basis
> > of our morality, what we tend to agree is good.
> >
>
> This seems to say that certain values persist and grow because they
> persist and grow.  And that the ones that persist and grow we agree
> are good.  But this is surely not a valid way to determine what is
> good.

As discussed earlier, we can not know what is "good", but only that
what works to promote our values must be considered good.  But even
that is from a limited subjective viewpoint.  However, regardless of
these limits, we can agree that what works to promote our values *over
increasing scope*, within an inherently competitive environment, is
better.

  It is an average across humanity with its current limitations.

No, we're talking all along about increasing awareness, so this is not
about averaging which would mean lost information.  Our shared values
are complex and overlapping in many dimensions, but we certainly do
agree on many of them, because of our common evolutionary basis.

As you point out above, there is an almost tautological flavor to this
concept, and this is because we are objectively functioning organisms
looking at ourselves through a subjective lens and trying to compose
an objective description of what we see happening.


> > Certain actions are considered good, to the extent that they promote
> > our increasingly shared values.
> >
> > What can we do?  We can continue to build a framework of social
> > decison-making that increases our awareness of our increasingly shared
> > subjective values, and that increases our increasingly objective
> > instrumental knowledge applied to the promotion of those values.
> >
>
> How about knowledge applied to the examination of those values as not
> necessarily benign or leading to our transhuman goals?

Your question is not completely clear to me, but I may be able to
address it by saying that while scientific knowledge is morally
neutral, each additional bit of understanding fills in more of our map
of reality, tending to aid in the promotion of our values either by
suggesting where to step, where not to step, or where to explore
further.

- Jef



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list