[ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

[Ben]

Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> Wrote:

 >Ethics is the study of moral questions, and while ethicists are good 
at that study they usually cannot claim they have moral truth (there are 
likely some exceptions). In the end it is *you* who will make moral 
choices, including the choice of what morality you follow. Good ethics 
means that you clarify this to yourself.?


 >Ben <bbenzai at yahoo.com> , 6/12/2014 6:57 PM:
 >
 >>Also, I'm not sure that everyone who is called an 'ethicist' is actually?
 >>all that good at chasing down consequences. ?Many of them seem to be
 >>more interested in imposing a religiously-inspired morality on other
 >>people than anything else, with logical chains of inference being the
 >>least of their concerns.
 >
 >
 >But this is because you mostly come across "ethicists" rather than 
ethicists. The people who like to write moralizing editorials or sit on 
institutional review boards are often not very trained in ethics, but 
like to claim they are representing it. The real ethicists are hanging 
out in philosophy departments most of the time.?
 >


So what is the point of all these ethics panels?  And who should be 
making decisions about things like whether it's right or wrong to allow 
parents to select the sex of their children, etc.?

OK, not such a good question, perhaps, so how about: Who should be 
making decisions about things like whether a research proposal that 
involves experimenting on, and eventually killing, a bunch of monkeys, 
should be approved, or whether it's right or wrong to allocate money to 
asteroid defence when there's a shortage of hospitals, etc.?

Ethicists are clearly no good for this, because all they can do is study 
and clarify the various positions, from different theoretical points of 
view.  Individual people are no good, because these things don't just 
affect individuals.  "Ethicists" are no good, because they are more 
interested in pushing a specific agenda than making considered 
decisions.  Who is left?


Ben Zaiboc