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The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

blog.joellehman.com

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Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#41

Post by AndrewKemendo »

there may be technological ways to enhance empathy or decrease our species’ tendency towards greed, revenge, and moral flexibility under duress.

Congratulations OP, you have reasoned yourself into transhumanism! To me the argument the OP described is one of the best ways to come to human-augmentation advocacy because it becomes obvious that we should be using technology to improve our capabilities.

To delve more deeply into transhumanism from this perspective, I would caution to not get preoccupied with current transhuman threads which are largely based on prosthetics and physical limitations.

Rather, I would look more towards nootropics and other technologies that help maintain or improve brain function and technologies which help reduce biases. In my opinion there is not enough being done to help the average person make better decisions on a daily basis, though there are some things. The fact that this is becoming a discussion point is great!

edit: I should also mention that the field of behavioral economics positively emphasizes the idea of "nudging" people toward better decision largely through design.

Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#43

Post by Udo »

coldtea wrote: post #39
Udo wrote: post #14

It is not a matter of morality. Suppose you have 100 billion robots, each programmed not to press a world-ending button. Some of them will press the button. It's a matter of statistics and the moral framework of the other robots doesn't even enter into the equation. That's exactly the situation we're in. Moral progress has always trailed behind our capabilities, and if I may say something heretical here, maybe it's a…

> It is not a matter of morality. Suppose you have 100 billion robots, each programmed not to press a world-ending button. Some of them will press the button. Am I missing something? If they are (a) robots, (b) each "programmed not to press a world-ending button", then none will.

Yes. The problem is the number of robots and the wide range of physical and mental defects they will exhibit statistically. Some of them will fail.

Sorry if it wasn't clear from the original post, but the hypothetical array of robots is an analogy intended to depict a perfectly moral society, the best case civilization achievable if you will, for the sake of argument. The larger argument goes that even such a "perfect" society cannot ever be deemed ready for its technological responsibilities - hence leading to the conclusion that the problem at hand is not one of morals to begin with and that the suggestion of holding back technological progress is a malevolent proposition on many levels.

Based on that... oh well, just read the post ;)

Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#45

Post by Fuxy »

coldtea wrote: post #39
Udo wrote: post #14

It is not a matter of morality. Suppose you have 100 billion robots, each programmed not to press a world-ending button. Some of them will press the button. It's a matter of statistics and the moral framework of the other robots doesn't even enter into the equation. That's exactly the situation we're in. Moral progress has always trailed behind our capabilities, and if I may say something heretical here, maybe it's a…

> It is not a matter of morality. Suppose you have 100 billion robots, each programmed not to press a world-ending button. Some of them will press the button. Am I missing something? If they are (a) robots, (b) each "programmed not to press a world-ending button", then none will.

Are you 100% certain? I mean programs do have bugs and it's not impossible to run into bugs that have catastrophic circumstances.

I hear stories of minor bugs that bankrupted companies (bad development practices) so what make you 100% certain that no robot will ever press the button?

Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#46

Post by bonemachine »

TL;DR Nice, planet-saving thoughts and all, if the original author could put a bit of markup around the key takeaway points. For example the following:

The main thesis is that it may be possible to apply science and technology to understand and improve human morality, and that this is a most critical human endeavor.

Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#47

Post by coconutrandom »

mynameishere wrote: post #26
jchung wrote: post #13

Highly speculative. Nothing concrete proposed.

Seriously. It's a known issue, almost a cliche, and has been for a while. If somebody had some suggestions, they'd get to the point quickly. Let me re-write it with some (bad) ideas: ------------------------------------------------------ Humans evolved with sticks and stones, and their resulting evolved sense of morality cannot be trusted with guns and bombs and nuclear weapons, etc. Therefore I propose the following…

Wow, I didn't see that you wrote "(bad)" when I first skimmed it. Bit of a shock.

Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#48

Post by chime »

coldtea wrote: post #39
Udo wrote: post #14

It is not a matter of morality. Suppose you have 100 billion robots, each programmed not to press a world-ending button. Some of them will press the button. It's a matter of statistics and the moral framework of the other robots doesn't even enter into the equation. That's exactly the situation we're in. Moral progress has always trailed behind our capabilities, and if I may say something heretical here, maybe it's a…

> It is not a matter of morality. Suppose you have 100 billion robots, each programmed not to press a world-ending button. Some of them will press the button. Am I missing something? If they are (a) robots, (b) each "programmed not to press a world-ending button", then none will.

MTBF of robots is not ∞.

Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#49

Post by 6d0debc071 »

aaronem wrote: post #34

This is a very sensible and well-reasoned, if ridiculously windy[1], essay which has its basis in one completely erroneous assumption, which is that it's possible to answer, save after the fact, a question like "[A]re we morally developed enough as a species to be entrusted with nuclear weapons?" That's a very simple question to answer, but you can only do so in hindsight. Did we exterminate ourselves with nuclear we…

> And even in that, there's another bogus assumption, which is hidden behind the word "entrusted". No one entrusted the human species with nuclear weapons; there was no event in which God, or angels, or sufficiently advanced aliens, descended from on high, amidst clouds of incense or rocket exhaust, and bequeathed unto us the knowledge of what happens when you squeeze a ball of uranium very tightly.

---------------------

From the perspective of the vast majority, scientists entrusted us with the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons. They could have kept quiet on that score.

Re: The Morality Apocalypse: An Open Letter to Bill and Melinda Gates

#50

Post by woofyman »

AhContraire wrote: post #33

Before the 1960's, when God was in schools, both Blacks and Whites, didn't have to lock their doors. Before the 1960's, there was no iron bars on windows, dead bolt locks, car, home and business alarms, and no security cameras in the home, business or city wide. Those are the facts, especially for the atheists and agnostics.

And black people were lynched and denied voting rights. Women were second class citizens. Gays were beaten by the police. Those were the days !
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