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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

#51

Post by theandrewbailey »

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.

What if they were all programmed differently?

What if one malfunctioned such that a part or appendage fell off and hit the button?

What if one bumped into another that was standing next to the button and accidentally pressed it?

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

#52

Post by coldtea »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #51
coldtea wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What if they were all programmed differently? What if one malfunctioned such that a part or appendage fell off and hit the button? What if one bumped into another that was standing next to the button and accidentally pressed it?

Well, what if there was no robot at all then, and someone accidentaly rested his coffee cup on the button?

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

#53

Post by aaronem »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #49
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. -----------------…

The perspective of the vast majority has no slightest bearing on what is or is not true.

You imply either that scientists are angels, or that every particle physicist is a member of a world-girdling conspiracy, which exists as a sort of caucus which decides, presumably by some highly precise and objective method, what every member shall or shall not do. Neither is even remotely plausible. Try again, please.

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

#54

Post by humanrebar »

jerf wrote: post #5

I think this is a very interesting question, but there's a pretty strong tendency in the human psyche to assume that the answer is more or less to replicate $MY_CLAIMED_MORALITY out to the rest of humanity, which this essay does nothing to avoid. ($MY_CLAIMED_MORALITY stands in contrast to $MY_ACTION_MORALITY, i.e., how one behaves, which this essay does discuss there being a difference in, to its credit.) Fiddling w…

> Tribalism is bad, right?

One person's tribalism is another's cultural heritage. I think the case has been made that stamping out unique cultures needlessly is immoral.

The biggest problem with this whole discussion is the idea that everyone even agrees on one morality. On top of that, even if everyone shared a common morality, it's questionable that it could be approximately quantified and graphed in a meaningful way.

To underscore this point, OP and many of the comments here state that there has been moral progress lately. Again, I'm not sure you can quantify morality like that, but I do know that a respectable amount of people believe that Western culture is regressing morally.

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

#55

Post by brudgers »

jal278 wrote: post #20
brudgers wrote: post #11

Noting that technical progress and morality begin diverging at the origin, and assuming that the graph is accurate, then the gap is just part and parcel of human existence. Analogous to Issac Bashevis Singer's observation that, "We must have free will - we have no choice," it could be said that we must have a morality gap. But even more charitably, if such a gap exists it has been known for two and a half millennia.…

While the gap between moral and technological progress may be known, the argument here is that it becomes increasingly dangerous as technological progress accelerates relative to moral. I think it would be a huge mistake to assume that the gap is an inherent part of human existence. Our morality results as a product of our brain and our culture. We can potentially use technology to remedy parts of our brain or our br…

The zeitgeist of each civilized age is that the world is on the highway to hell. The quote from Plato wasn't accidental, the Athenians condemned Socrates. Though something from Confucius or Rousseau would also have worked.

However, leaving literary and cultural arguments aside, the argument that natural selection has not or will not create a good balance for the human ecological niche seems to show no more faith in science than an appeal to a divine creator. Likewise, the idea that humans are somehow exempt from natural selection in a way which allows them to shape it, similarly relies on some notion of our holding some unique biological status.

If you're selling brain state materialism, then you lose traditional notions of morality and culture. That's just the price of radically redefining traditional notions of the mind.

Even more to the point, the idea that morality cannot cope needs to show why the Hobbesian view - developed during a time when the movable type printing press enabled spreading Protestantism to violently play itself out in the English Civil War - is not the correct path. In other words, the morality gap depends on the absence of political progress - an argument difficult to wage in light of modern history and the diminishing of colonialism, slavery and monarchy, and the rising of the idea that there are universal human rights and more recently pressure for their extension to other species.

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

#56

Post by goblin89 »

jal278 wrote: post #21
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…

Although I am not advocating a technological slowdown (nor do I think one is even possible) -- I think a wiser people would inhibit technology "until we're ready." If the result of technological growth vastly outpacing our ability to responsibly handle its power is extinction, then it is easier to make an argument for the morality in technological caution.

Unfortunately, humans don't seem to have the qualities necessary for this to happen. The more institutions cooperate to inhibit technological progress, the more there will be to gain by defecting.

Unless, that is, there're sufficiently solid reasons for all players to believe that defecting is like starting a nuclear war: destructive for everyone in very close future.

(I feel there should be a term for this situation.)

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

#57

Post by mathattack »

Very good questions to ask, though I'm not sure it's a valid premise.

Can we measure or track morality similar to technical progress? How could we really know that we're on a "right" or "wrong" track on morality? We could say, "If we kill less of each other, we are on the right track" but how do we know that what might appear a small morale roadblock isn't setting us towards progress? For example: At first blush Hiroshima looked awful, though even there we had some ambiguity as generals defended national interest. But what if the experience in Hiroshima allowed us to keep our wits and not escalate Korea, Vietnam or Afghanistan into a nuclear war? There's no way to know if we made morale progress.

But I do like the question, which is, "How can we make sure we're increasing our ability to get along with each other, as we develop better weapons to hurt each other with?"

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

#58

Post by 6d0debc071 »

aaronem wrote: post #53
6d0debc071 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. -----------------…

The perspective of the vast majority has no slightest bearing on what is or is not true. You imply either that scientists are angels, or that every particle physicist is a member of a world-girdling conspiracy, which exists as a sort of caucus which decides, presumably by some highly precise and objective method, what every member shall or shall not do. Neither is even remotely plausible. Try again, please.

I simply imply that people are responsible for their actions. People were given the knowledge to make nuclear weapons by those smarter than them.

The fact that others may very well have eventually given them the same is neither here nor there, and your weird obsession with requiring it be angels and aliens does nothing to alter that. If you assume many groups of aliens, each species of which might have given out nukes, then you're in the exact same position as our theoretical physicists - 'of course humans weren't entrusted with nuclear weapons, after all, aliens aren't all part of a great alien conspiracy....'

The two scenarios are functionally analogous but for the fact that ALIENS is posted into the second.

You're just dancing with semantics.

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

#59

Post by brudgers »

As a picture the graph may be worth a thousand words, but in this case all of them are nonsensical.

Seriously, what the fuck is the graph mean supposed to mean? Is it really trying to show the delta's of technology and morality? How is that supposed to be measured? Or is it some aggregate amount of technology compared to an aggregate amount of morality? And even if it is, how was that measured?

On the other hand, those who have suggested that what is meant by morality is unclear, are mistaken. It is very clear. It is a traditional Abrahamic view - eating from the tree of knowledge is evil. And though we could just blame Eve, it doesn't go with the pseudo-scientific presentation.

So let's blame the Gateses. Gateses took our precious Netscape. Nasty dirty sneaky Gateses. We hates the Gateses.

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

#60

Post by undoware »

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.

Yes, and the streets were paved with blood.

The arc of history is long, but it turns toward justice, and away from onanistic nostalgia.

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