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I think we have grown too soft. In my ethics[^1], I should feel compassion for fellow human beings, and maybe for sentient animals. But if I give anything els

by dsign 4y ago

I think we have grown too soft. In my ethics[^1], I should feel compassion for fellow human beings, and maybe for sentient animals. But if I give anything else that same compassion, anything else that--thanks to my irrationality--will stop being a tool of progress for me and mine and become the adversary of me and mine that will exterminate us all, then I'll become a moral idiot complicit to genocide of my group. Let's create "People for the conservancy of humanity." [^1]: My ethics is a personal choice designed to give something back.

onion2k 4y ago
Your 'ethics' are the default position for humanity. The overwhelming majority of people have the notion that you should be a nice to other humans, but being horrible to everything else regardless of whether there's any chance it knows you're being a dick to it is fine. It's a boring position to argue from and throughly unoriginal.
- dsign 4y ago
  It have gotten us here. Let me be alive and I'll find many ways to be original. Don't ask me to be original by being dead.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    There are lots of things from human history that have "gotten us here." I don't think that's a good measure of whether or not we should keep doing them. I have no doubt it'd be easy to argue that feudalism, cholera, and the international slave trade all furthered human endeavor because we learned a lot from them and built economies around them, but that doesn't make them desirable now. We're capable of being better than our ancestors, and it's not unreasonable to suggest we actually have a moral duty to improve our species for the sake of our own progeny. That improvement can only be measured against the past.
psiops 4y ago
_Maybe_ sentient animals? As in it _might_ be ethical to have no compassion for sentient beings that happen to be non-human? We are finding signs of sentience/consiousness in more and more animal species. It's likely it's a spectrum. It makes sense to me that AIs will have a place on this spectrum. That does not mean we need to conserve everyone on the spectrum at all costs. It means they deserve consideration.
- dsign 4y ago
  It might be ethical to have no compassion for sentient beings, yes. Chicken are sentient, as are--to a lesser degree--mice and cockroaches. Even trees, in completely different timescales and ways than ours, are sentient. So, IMO, sentience doesn't automatically merits compassion. Be too compassionate to any of those I just enumerated, and you will be giving fellow human beings a hard time.
  - psiops 4y ago
    Whether or not it gives someone else "a hard time" is hardly a measure of the ethics of an action towards a sentient being. I think sentience at least warrant a measure of compassion and consideration.

by dsign 4y ago

onion2k 4y ago

Your 'ethics' are the default position for humanity. The overwhelming majority of people have the notion that you should be a nice to other humans, but being horrible to everything else regardless of whether there's any chance it knows you're being a dick to it is fine. It's a boring position to argue from and throughly unoriginal.

dsign 4y ago
It have gotten us here. Let me be alive and I'll find many ways to be original. Don't ask me to be original by being dead.
- onion2k 4y ago
  There are lots of things from human history that have "gotten us here." I don't think that's a good measure of whether or not we should keep doing them. I have no doubt it'd be easy to argue that feudalism, cholera, and the international slave trade all furthered human endeavor because we learned a lot from them and built economies around them, but that doesn't make them desirable now. We're capable of being better than our ancestors, and it's not unreasonable to suggest we actually have a moral duty to improve our species for the sake of our own progeny. That improvement can only be measured against the past.

psiops 4y ago

_Maybe_ sentient animals? As in it _might_ be ethical to have no compassion for sentient beings that happen to be non-human? We are finding signs of sentience/consiousness in more and more animal species. It's likely it's a spectrum. It makes sense to me that AIs will have a place on this spectrum. That does not mean we need to conserve everyone on the spectrum at all costs. It means they deserve consideration.

dsign 4y ago
It might be ethical to have no compassion for sentient beings, yes. Chicken are sentient, as are--to a lesser degree--mice and cockroaches. Even trees, in completely different timescales and ways than ours, are sentient. So, IMO, sentience doesn't automatically merits compassion. Be too compassionate to any of those I just enumerated, and you will be giving fellow human beings a hard time.
- psiops 4y ago
  Whether or not it gives someone else "a hard time" is hardly a measure of the ethics of an action towards a sentient being. I think sentience at least warrant a measure of compassion and consideration.