3 ms·
For those who are curious, the term was coined on this blog post[1]: > The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says that you can have a particle spi
by chroma 3y ago
For those who are curious, the term was coined on this blog post[1]:
> The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says that you can have a particle spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time – until you look at it, at which point it definitely becomes one or the other. The theory claims that observing reality fundamentally changes it.
> The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster. I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular.
The post provides real life examples of government programs, nonprofits, and individuals being criticized for helping in the “wrong” way.
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20210125231725/https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210125231725/https://blog.jaib...
- unglaublich 3y agoSo, you would flip the railroad switch to kill only 1 instead of 5 helpless people?
- roflc0ptic 3y agothe math checks out
- pjot 3y agoMIT recreated this thought experiment to research the “morality” in autonomous vehicles. https://www.moralmachine.net/ https://www.moralmachine.net/
- bandyaboot 3y agoIt interprets telling the vehicle to crash into a barrier rather than hit pedestrians as not placing as much value on protecting passengers. But really, this is just a recognition that the passengers are far more protected in a crash than the pedestrian are when getting hit by the car. Instead of a barrier, it should be a large cliff or something.
- dtech 3y agoIt explicitly states the passengers will be killed
- bandyaboot 3y agoNever has my lack of attention to detail cost so many lives.
- noduerme 3y agoSo, observing a problem is no more complicated than becoming aware that it exists. That's the only interaction necessary to invoke ethical liability. How does then pretending you didn't observe it release you from anything?
- peteradio 3y agoYour guilty conscience will undoubtedly destroy you from within. If you do not repent and request mercy from the great beyonder then surely your next life will be lived in misery as some sort of atomic particle with human awareness and deep dread of your current circumstances.
- noduerme 3y agoI can't tell how much of your sarcasm is based on taking me literally. I'm an atheist. I don't believe in an afterlife, and I'm always blown away when people say that without a "fear of God" or fear of hell, no one would act morally. Whenever someone says that, I'm like, well, I guess you want to kill and torture and rape people and you need this dumb framework to stop you from doing that, so thank goodness for religion. But personally I think we all have ethical responsibilities to other living beings, and especially to our own kind, which spring from appreciating the complexity of the world but can be completely attributed to rational, selfish, deductive reasoning and self-preservation, if you really want to get down to it. Tl;dr you're arguing the fundamentalist POV that ethics can't exist without a God.