10 ms·
It's interesting that people are trying to determine the ethics of simulating human brain while ethics itself is a probably a product of human brain.
by kailuowang 13y ago
It's interesting that people are trying to determine the ethics of simulating human brain while ethics itself is a probably a product of human brain.
- crusso 13y agoIn the same way that math is.
- kailuowang 13y agoCan you elaborate on "the same way"? I thought most people would agree that math is not a product of human brain, it exists regardless of the existence of human race.
- evincarofautumn 13y agoDepends on the math in question. I don’t really believe that the real numbers, for example, correspond to a physical phenomenon. They’re just a convenient tool we use to solve problems.
- crusso 13y agoRight. Ethics exist without the human race as well. Like math, they parallel reality but are thought of as conceptual.
- sliverstorm 13y ago"Math" is a human invention much the same way "Time" is a human invention. We measure it, we describe it, we manipulate it on paper- but It was always there.
- crusso 13y agoSo are ethics.
- sliverstorm 13y ago"Ethics" are man-made, but unlike time and mathematics, they do not exist without man. Time and mathematics are tools we created to understand our world; ethics is a code we created to tell us how to live in it.
- crusso 13y agoEthics exist in the animal kingdom "without man". Some animals mate for life. Some animals protect each other from harm, even putting themselves in danger. Ethics are an abstraction that reflect the realities of entity interaction. The reason these abstractions are useful is the same reason that numbers are useful as an abstraction that represents quantities of objects. The tie of ethics to reality isn't as easy to see as numbers, but when you realize that ethics are practical and evolved as a survival mechanism, maybe you can begin to see the connection.