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Nice, IMO this (short) FAQ has a lot more useful info than the featured article. His claim at the end that creating intelligent life through evolution is deeply

Nice, IMO this (short) FAQ has a lot more useful info than the featured article. His claim at the end that creating intelligent life through evolution is deeply immoral confuses me, though -- by all accounts, we arose through that process, and relatively few people seem bothered by it.

c1ccccc1 6y ago
People are probably less bothered by it because it happened so long ago, and was not perpetrated by any kind of thinking agent. The process of evolution definitely entails a lot of suffering, though. Consider almost any attribute of modern day humans, fear of heights, say. Millions of creatures had to fall to their deaths (many of them very similar to modern humans) to etch that fear of heights into the surviving generations. Or take the gag reflex: many deaths by choking. The immune system: billions of deaths by disease and infection. It would certainly be immoral to inflict such things, if you had the ability to prevent them.
athriren 6y ago
imagine a person gets cancer and dies. this is, by itself and with no context, an act that has no moral component—it just happened. now imagine YOU gave the person cancer. this difference is the difference between the presumably undirected evolution that led to us, and the sort of fucking around with actual living things we would need to do to direct evolution ourselves.
Sharlin 6y ago
Relatively few people have thought through the moral implications of a few hundred million years of nature red in tooth and claw, so that's not exactly surprising. After all, relatively few people have even thought through the moral implications of the fact that they can purchase abundant cheap meat from any supermarket. The thought of starting a simulation that has even a slight chance of creating entities capable of suffering should give anyone a major pause.
codeulike 6y ago
He means that deliberately setting up a synthetic evolution process to generate intelligent life would be immoral. His short story Crystal Nights deals with this. Its a corker of a story. https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html “What created the only example of consciousness we know of?” Daniel asked. “Evolution.” “Exactly. But I don’t want to wait three billion years, so I need to make the selection process a great deal more refined, and the sources of variation more targeted.” Julie digested this. “You want to try to evolve true AI? Conscious, human-level AI?” “Yes.” Daniel saw her mouth tightening, saw her struggling to measure her words before speaking. “With respect,” she said, “I don’t think you’ve thought that through.” “On the contrary,” Daniel assured her. “I’ve been planning this for twenty years.” “Evolution,” she said, “is about failure and death. Do you have any idea how many sentient creatures lived and died along the way to Homo sapiens? How much suffering was involved?”

c1ccccc1 6y ago

People are probably less bothered by it because it happened so long ago, and was not perpetrated by any kind of thinking agent. The process of evolution definitely entails a lot of suffering, though. Consider almost any attribute of modern day humans, fear of heights, say. Millions of creatures had to fall to their deaths (many of them very similar to modern humans) to etch that fear of heights into the surviving generations. Or take the gag reflex: many deaths by choking. The immune system: billions of deaths by disease and infection. It would certainly be immoral to inflict such things, if you had the ability to prevent them.

athriren 6y ago

imagine a person gets cancer and dies. this is, by itself and with no context, an act that has no moral component—it just happened. now imagine YOU gave the person cancer. this difference is the difference between the presumably undirected evolution that led to us, and the sort of fucking around with actual living things we would need to do to direct evolution ourselves.

Sharlin 6y ago

Relatively few people have thought through the moral implications of a few hundred million years of nature red in tooth and claw, so that's not exactly surprising. After all, relatively few people have even thought through the moral implications of the fact that they can purchase abundant cheap meat from any supermarket. The thought of starting a simulation that has even a slight chance of creating entities capable of suffering should give anyone a major pause.

codeulike 6y ago

He means that deliberately setting up a synthetic evolution process to generate intelligent life would be immoral. His short story Crystal Nights deals with this. Its a corker of a story. https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/CRYSTAL/Crystal.html “What created the only example of consciousness we know of?” Daniel asked. “Evolution.” “Exactly. But I don’t want to wait three billion years, so I need to make the selection process a great deal more refined, and the sources of variation more targeted.” Julie digested this. “You want to try to evolve true AI? Conscious, human-level AI?” “Yes.” Daniel saw her mouth tightening, saw her struggling to measure her words before speaking. “With respect,” she said, “I don’t think you’ve thought that through.” “On the contrary,” Daniel assured her. “I’ve been planning this for twenty years.” “Evolution,” she said, “is about failure and death. Do you have any idea how many sentient creatures lived and died along the way to Homo sapiens? How much suffering was involved?”