[ExI] Man’s Greatest Achievement – Nikola Tesla on Akashic engineering and the future of humanity

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2015-12-03 09:46, Giulio Prisco wrote:
> Anders, you philosophers are really hair-splitters.
I take that as a compliment. But I understand what you are saying: why 
care? Because we are talking about ultimate, important things. If we are 
not as careful with them as we are with mere medicines, explosives or 
stock markets, should we not expect mistakes to lead to devastating 
losses of value?

>   To uneducated morons like me, good is meaningful. Becoming co-creators places us
> besides the Creator by definition, and it's ultimate destiny because
> it's a good ultimate outcome.

A lot of ethical systems agree that doing good is meaningful (for 
various reasons). But what the good is, and how to justify it, is more 
divergent.

Is my nephew playing Minecraft a co-creator to "Notch" Persson? In a 
sense, yes. Notch made the game for people to play and create in, yet he 
has an ontological and moral status regarding the game that is more deep 
than my nephew's, despite my nephew's creations and joy actually giving 
the game meaning. (The theodice problem in Minecraft is so easy: why did 
Notch create creepers? To make things exciting! But this kind of answer 
does not carry over to our world, since here we have value-carrying 
beings that actually have their value harmed by the real-world 
counterparts of creepers)

Can you fail at destiny? The traditional idea is that destiny must 
happen. But that does not imply a good ultimate outcome. If destiny is 
something we are aiming at, then at most it is something to hope for, 
not something we can put our faith in.

Yes, philosophers are annoying :-)

-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University