[extropy-chat] Prime Directive

A B austriaaugust at yahoo.com
Fri Oct 27 00:39:45 UTC 2006


Hi Robert,

Robert writes:

"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?"

That's why I included the "conscious" qualifier. I think it is a safe presumption that a single E. Coli is not conscious (it is subject to causality/(basic algorithms) and that's about all). A bacterium, a lump of dirt, a rock, a palm tree - don't have rights and don't "deserve" rights because they are not conscious in that form. As such, I have no problem with you doing anything you want to with any of these items or any other item that we can all confidently conclude is not conscious. 

It is my personal philosophy that no person should be forced or obligated to do "nice" things for others (other conscious beings), however a person should be prevented from doing "evil" (where "evil" can be clearly agreed upon by a *majority* of denizens eg. murder, torture, rape, etc.) things to others. To my mind, that is the most reasonable and inclusive conception of what it means to be "free" while also preserving the "freedom" of others.

Robert writes:

"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."

I don't really understand this paragraph, or the point you are trying to make. But I can say that it seems to me that the ideas can never arise in the first place except through consciousness.

Robert writes:

"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."

Should we just abandon the quaint notion of ethics altogether? Should we just leave physics as the only judge of what is morally acceptable or abhorrent? Surely you can foresee that doing so would make this a rather unpleasant and/or unjust Universe for the majority of conscious beings. That doesn't bother you?

Best Wishes,

Jeffrey Herrlich

Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote: 
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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