[extropy-chat] Prime Directive

[Robert Bradbury]

On 10/26/06, A B <austriaaugust at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> In a hypothetical situation: The sooner "we" arrive to help pre-industrial
> civilization A, the fewer inhabitants of A will die and/or suffer. As I
> argued in a different post, it is logically and physically *impossible* to
> ethically violate a conscious entity that: does not exist, has never
> existed, and never will exist (ie. it is impossible to violate the "future"
> beings of civilization A who "would have lived" if we had never intervened.)
>

Oh, my god, you mean all those E. coli I am happily flushing down the toilet
a couple of times a day (clearly "pre-industrial") deserve to be saved? [1]
Shit, I'm just being an evil and bad person every time I go to the john [2].

Ok, so the only way out of this ethical swamp is to never give my ideas
"consciousness".  It seems feasible to transfer my ideas to the compost heap
[3] on quite a regular basis and thus avoid their becoming conscious.  That
way I avoid the problem of "violating" their right to exist.  Thus the most
"moral" individuals (following the prime directive) stamp out or discard all
ideas before they evolve into conscious entitites.

Might I suggest that "consciousness" is a poor criteria for deciding what to
preserve or not preserve.  Yes I know -- without that our moral compass is
adrift in a sea of chaos.  Life is a dish almost always served cold.

Robert

1. Of course there is the "minor" problem that the E. coli might actually
like it in the sewers -- their potential resource base isn't limited by the
body they happen to be inhabiting.  Kind of like the fact that Klingons have
at least in part a raison d'etre which includes fighting and winning.
2. I'm sure some of the readers have concluded this long before now...
3. The ExICh list ?
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