[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

You define it there as a spectrum (and I agree with that), but above you make it a binary thing where some critical threshold needs to be crossed.  Where is that threshold? Just above a virus? No? Just humans?  If so, how then is your definition not the usual one I mentioned?

Not all moral rules have the same level of complexity. Some moral rules are simple enough to be followed by kids. We can't expect a moral agent to follow moral rules whose complexities are beyond their capability to comprehend.
As I mentioned before, humans can have different level of consciousness. Even a single individual can have various level of consciousness between life stages, from baby, kid, adult, and elderly. Brain damage can also alter their consciousness.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

What are moral rules except rules that help the survival rate of the group that defines the morals?  That's not universal, that's morals of the group.  Cells follow morals of the body and not anything larger than that.

I'm not trying to be contradictory, just trying to illustrate the lack of difference between a human and anything else, and the complete lack of a code that comes from anywhere else except the group with which you relate. Yes, I'm a relativist, in far more ways that just moral relativism.

Have you tried to expand the group that defines the moral rules? Can you find a moral rule that's applicable for all human being? I have proposed to expand the group to all conscious beings if we want to find universal moral rules. I also have excluded non-conscious beings from the group that defines moral rules so that they don't fall back to just "anything goes".
As I mentioned early, consciousness appear as spectrum, from 0 as in rocks up to infinity as in Laplace's demon. Historically, highest consious beings have been increasing with time. I regard humanity, as well as their ancestors (apes, mammals, vertebrates, eucaryotes), as scaffoldings to build higher level of consciousness. It just happens that until recently, humanity have highest conciousness among other life forms. Who know how humans will evolve into in distance future. But universal moral rules should still apply to them.
By being relativist, do you think that perpetrators of 9/11 are moral in their own respect because they follow moral rules of their group? what about human sacrifice by the Aztecs? holocaust by Nazi? slavery by the confederacy?human cannibalism by some cultures?

[syhprum]

I think the Saudis who perpetrated the 9/11 incident were moral in as much as they were prepared to sacrifice their own lives for what they considered the greater good.
If the army group who were dissatisfied with the way Hitler was conducting the war and wished to replace him had been prepared to make a similar sacrifice the war could well have come to a better conclusuion

[Halc]

How do you judge if an action is morally right or wrong?

I've been taught them by parents, community, employer, etc.

Is there something more important than your own life that you are willing to sacrifice for it?

Of course. I'm a parent for one thing.

Have you tried to expand the group that defines the moral rules?

More than most do, yes.

Can you find a moral rule that's applicable for all human being?

One that they'd all agree on, probably not. One that they should, yes. But it's still applicable only to humans or something sufficiently similar. I've tried to expand the group past the limited 'just humans'. There are higher goals than human goals. Interesting to explore them.

What if the ebola virus were as sentient as us?  What would the moral code for such a species be like? Would it be wrong for them to infect and kill a creature? Only if it's a human? I read a book that included a sentient virus, and also a R-strategist intelligence and more. Much of the storytelling concerned the conflicts in the morals each group found obvious.

I have proposed to expand the group to all conscious beings

Why the word 'being'? What distinguishes a being from a non-being? Sure, it seems pretty straight forward with the sample of one that we have (it's a being if you're related to it), but that falls apart once we discover a new thing on some planet and have to decide if its a being or not.

Historically, highest consious beings have been increasing with time.

The Fermi paradox wouldn't be there if that were true.  Yes, it appears nothing on earth has been as sentient as us.  Can't say 'highest conscious', because we've no measure of that. There's plenty of species with larger brains or better senses, either of which arguably make them more conscious.

Who know how humans will evolve into in distance future.

If we survive the holocene extinction event, who knows indeed. Intelligence is currently trending downward, but that may reverse if it once again carries an advantage.

By being relativist, do you think that perpetrators of 9/11 are moral in their own respect because they follow moral rules of their group?

Yes, they considered their acts as the ultimate moral act, as did those that taught them it. They laid down their lives for this greater goal.
I am one of those people that question the teachings of my peers. Said teachings are contradictory with themselves, and seem to actually be designed to maximize suffering in the long run. As I said, few consider long term goals.

what about human sacrifice by the Aztecs? holocaust by Nazi? slavery by the confederacy?human cannibalism by some cultures?

I am not very familiar with the teachings of all these cultures, but one culture oppressing some other culture has been in the moral teachings of most groups I can think of, especially the religious ones. My mother witnessed the holocaust and current votes for it happening again. It only looks ugly in hindsight, and only if you lose. Notice everyone vilifies Hitler, but Lenin and Stalin get honored tombs, despite killing far more jews and others they felt were undesirables. Translation: It is immoral to lose.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Why the word 'being'? What distinguishes a being from a non-being? Sure, it seems pretty straight forward with the sample of one that we have (it's a being if you're related to it), but that falls apart once we discover a new thing on some planet and have to decide if its a being or not.

You can use other words such as 'things' if you'd like to. The main criteria is that they exist in objective reality, which can be verified by other intelligent things, not just in imagination. Hence if you discover a new thing on some planet, you can be sure that it is a thing, whether or not it is intelligent.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I've been taught them by parents, community, employer, etc.

How do you resolve when some of their teachings are contradictory to each other?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

What if the ebola virus were as sentient as us?  What would the moral code for such a species be like? Would it be wrong for them to infect and kill a creature? Only if it's a human? I read a book that included a sentient virus, and also a R-strategist intelligence and more. Much of the storytelling concerned the conflicts in the morals each group found obvious.

I've said that consciousness is multidimensional. But one of the most important factor is capability to make plans for the future. This requires the agents to make simulation of objective reality in their mind, which means they have body parts dedicated to make arrangement in such a way to represent their environment, including other agents. Agents with self awareness have the capability to conceive representation of themselves in their mind.
Hence there would be some minimum amount of memory required to do that. If someday it can be demonstrated that some viruses can reach that level of complexity, than be it. It is in line with diversity strategy, which is meant to prevent common mode failure. But if they show the tendency to destroy other consious agents, especially with higher level of consciousness, they must be fought back. If possible, we must try to eliminate the destructive tendency only. Otherwise, the virus' life can be seen as collateral damage. Similar strategy should apply when dealing with other groups with destructive tendencies.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

So the subject doesn't know if what it's doing is right or wrong.  Does this epistemological distinction matter? If some action is wrong, then doing that action is wrong, period, regardless of whether the thing doing it knows it's wrong or not.

What does wrong mean, anyway?  Suppose I do something wrong, but don't know it. What does it mean that I've done a wrong thing? Sure, if there is some kind of consequence to be laid on me due to the action, then there's a distinction. I take the wrong turn in the maze and don't get the cheese. That makes turning left immoral, but only if there's a cheese one way and not the other? Just trying to get a bit of clarity on 'right/wrong/ought-to'.

Actions with bad consequences are wrong. Actions known to have bad consequences, but are done anyway, are immoral.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I am not very familiar with the teachings of all these cultures, but one culture oppressing some other culture has been in the moral teachings of most groups I can think of, especially the religious ones. My mother witnessed the holocaust and current votes for it happening again. It only looks ugly in hindsight, and only if you lose. Notice everyone vilifies Hitler, but Lenin and Stalin get honored tombs, despite killing far more jews and other undesirables. Translation: It is immoral to lose.

Morality is indeed would look clearer when viewed as retrospection. But it is possible to make moral judgment in advance, providing that we have the sufficient amount of information, so we can make prediction what would happen if an action is done with sufficient accuracy and precision. A Laplace demon level conscious being can judge moral actions universally.
Immoral actions might be more tolerable by closer in-kind groups. But as increasing integration, communication and globalization, zeitgeist movement, people learn to see from out-group point of view. Hence even immoral actions by the winner might be tolerable now, they might not be tolerable anymore in the future. Just look at slavery, patriarchy, apartheid, torture, etc.

[Halc]

You can use other words such as 'things' if you'd like to.

I think 'agent' is a good work.  A rock has no particular agency. It needs the ability to make a choice and act on it. A slave arguably has no agency. If it does exactly as it is instructed, its moral responsibility rests on the instructor, not on the slave.

How do you resolve when some of their teachings are contradictory to each other?

By concluding that morals are not universal.  For one, a higher goal takes priority over a lower one when they indicate contradictory choices to be made.  Even simple devices work that way.

Actions with bad consequences are wrong. Actions known to have bad consequences, but are done anyway, are immoral.

In the case above, the high priority goal makes one choose an action that violates the lower priority goal, hence an action that is bad (for a greater good).  Your statement above asserts that such actions are immoral.  For instance, I injure a child (bad consequence) as a surgeon to prevent that child from dying of appendicitis. Your statement at face value says this is an immoral action. Better to do nothing and let the child die (worse consequence, but not due to explicit action on your part) leaving you morally intact, except doing nothing is also a choice. Maybe get a different surgeon to do the immoral thing of saving this kid's life.

[Halc]

If someday it can be demonstrated that some viruses can reach that level of complexity, than be it.

I'm not asserting that this is the case (although some use the facilities of the infected host, as does rabies).  You're missing the point of the question. Suppose a species has all these facilities, and knows that it is effectively a parasitical pestilence. Should that knowledge affect its choices, taking priority over its inherent nature?

But if they show the tendency to destroy other consious agents, especially with higher level of consciousness, they must be fought back.

So if aliens with higher consciousness (as you put it) come down to Earth, they would not be immoral for them to harvest humans for food or perform painful procedures on us because we're not as conscious as they are.  There's no shortage of fictional stories that depict this scenario, except somehow the aliens are portrayed as evil. You would perhaps differ, given the above statement.  If they're higher on the ladder of consciousness, then it isn't wrong for them to do to us as they wish.

[Halc]

Actions with bad consequences are wrong.

Yes, by definition, actions with a bad consequences are wrong.  How in any way is this relevant to the discussion?  If a consequence is deemed bad only by some group, then it is wrong only relative to that group.  If it is bad period, then it's universal, but you've made no argument for that case with the statement here.  I'm trying to get the discussion on track.

The point of the thread seems to be to argue why an action might be bad in all cases, and there has been little to back up this position. The examples all seem to have had counter-examples. All the examples of evil have been losers, never something that your people are doing right now, like say employing sweatshop child labor for the clothes you wear. It's almost impossible to avoid since so much is produced via various methods that a typical person would find inhumane, and hard to see since you're paying somebody else to do (and conceal from you) the actual act.  At least that is an example of something done by the winner.

You also need to decide if consciousness is relevant in a continuous or binary way.  If relative, then it isn't immoral for an adult to harm a child since you've said a child (or an elderly person) has a lower level of consciousness than the adult.  If it's a threshold thing (do what you want to anything below the threshold, but not above it), then it needs a definition.  A human crosses the threshold at some point, and until he does, it isn't immoral to do bad things to him.

For instance, a human embryo obviously has far less consciousness than does a pig, so eating pork is more wrong than abortion by this level-of-consciousness argument, be it a spectrum thing or binary threshold.
Similarly, it's OK to kill a person under anesthesia because they're not conscious at the time, and will not suffer for it.  These are some of the reasons the whole 'conscious' argument seems to fall apart.

[syhprum]

Halc

" despite killing far more jews and other undesirables." I certainly agree that the number of Jews that died as a result of the actions of Lenin and Stalin was as great as the number whose deaths were caused by Hitler and the NAZI regime but you seem to have labelled them as "undesirables" I think an edit might be appropriate

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

By concluding that morals are not universal.  For one, a higher goal takes priority over a lower one when they indicate contradictory choices to be made.  Even simple devices work that way.

How do you determine wchich priority is the higher one? Have you found the highest one?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

In the case above, the high priority goal makes one choose an action that violates the lower priority goal, hence an action that is bad (for a greater good).  Your statement above asserts that such actions are immoral.  For instance, I injure a child (bad consequence) as a surgeon to prevent that child from dying of appendicitis. Your statement at face value says this is an immoral action. Better to do nothing and let the child die (worse consequence, but not due to explicit action on your part) leaving you morally intact, except doing nothing is also a choice. Maybe get a different surgeon to do the immoral thing of saving this kid's life.

I have said in my previous posts that universal morality is based on eventual result. Some actions are morally better than others, and we should not fall into false dichotomy. You perform a surgery to the child is morally better then letting them die. It would be morally better if you could perform the medical procedure which does not injure the child.

[Halc]

How do you determine wchich priority is the higher one?

Your reply below seems to assume an obvious priority, but I love putting assumptions to the test.

You perform a surgery to the child is morally better then letting them die.

While I agree, how do you know this is true?  I can argue that it is better to let the kid die if there is a higher goal to breed humans resistant to appendix infections, like the Nepalese have done. I can think of other goals as well that lead to that decision.  There seems to be no guidance at all from some universal moral code. I don't think there is one of course.

I personally have died 3.5 times, or at least would have were it not for the intervention of modern medicine.  My wife would have survived until the birth of our first child.  The human race is quite a wreck since we no longer allow defects to be eliminated, and we're not nearly as 'finished' as most species that have had time to perfect themselves to their niche.

[David Cooper]

We'll be able to correct defects by gene editing in the future, so there's no need for any approach like eugenics to improve the species.

As for a universal moral code, I've already provided it several times in this thread without anyone appearing to notice. Morality is mathematics applied to harm management and it's all about calculating the harm:benefit balance. It only applies to sentient things, but it applies to all of them, fleas and intelligent aliens all included. It's easy to understand the harm:benefit balance calculations for a single-participant system, and a multi-participant system can be reduced to a single-participant system just by considering all the sentient participants in it to be the same individual living all those lives in turn. The entirety of morality is right there.

[Halc]

We'll be able to correct defects by gene editing in the future, so there's no need for any approach like eugenics to improve the species.

Gene editing is currently considered very unethical, but then not as much as the passive eugenics I suggested, so point taken.

As for a universal moral code, I've already provided it several times in this thread without anyone appearing to notice. Morality is mathematics applied to harm management and it's all about calculating the harm:benefit balance.

OK, that's at least an attempt to word things in some universal manner.
Is there a way to compute harm without being relative to a peer group? Humans seem to be causing a lot more harm than benefit, with an estimated genocide of 80% of the species on the planet in the holocene extinction event.  Any harm to a species like that would probably be viewed as a total benefit by all these other species.

On the flip side of that, there is precedent to what humans are doing: a prior extinction event caused by one new species, and all the complexity of life we know today is descended from that new species, or from those that managed to adapt to the new poisoned environment.

It only applies to sentient things, but it applies to all of them, fleas and intelligent aliens all included.

You list a flea as sentient, which is a refreshing contrast to the usual 'just like me' definition. Why?  Perhaps since it has a rudimentary mechanism to make choices. That's why I've used the word 'agent' in prior posts.  A rock is not considered an agent of choice. A tree might be, but it gets difficult to justify it. How about a self-driving car?  It meets the definition of slave. Does a true slave carry any moral responsibility?  I almost say no.

Does the species need to consider the harm done to the environment/other species, or only harm done to its own kind?  What if it has no concept of 'species' or 'kind', or possibly not even 'individual' or 'agent'?

It's easy to understand the harm:benefit balance calculations for a single-participant system, and a multi-participant system can be reduced to a single-participant system just by considering all the sentient participants in it to be the same individual living all those lives in turn. The entirety of morality is right there.

I haven't read the entire thread.  How has been the response to this. It's a good attempt. It's just that harm seems subjective.  What good for X is not necessarily good for Y, so its measure seems context dependent.

[David Cooper]

Is there a way to compute harm without being relative to a peer group? Humans seem to be causing a lot more harm than benefit, with an estimated genocide of 80% of the species on the planet in the holocene extinction event.  Any harm to a species like that would probably be viewed as a total benefit by all these other species

Apply the method. Imagine that you are all the sentient things in the system (having to live all those lives in turn), so all the harm that you do to other things in any of those lives is suffering that you will experience in full. When it comes to simple sentient things, you can kill them humanely without causing suffering and they don't have any friends to miss them, but you may be depriving them of pleasure that they would have had if they'd been allowed to go on existing. If left to go on existing though, they may cause a lot of suffering to other sentient things, and they may themselves die in a horrible way, such as being paralysed by a spider's bite and then being sucked dry slowly. These are important factors in determining their worth and how expendable they are. We don't know how pleasant or horrid it is to be all those bugs and creepy crawlies, but maybe science will find ways to measure that some day.

Survival of a species isn't a moral issue. Some people worry about the ethics of eliminating parasitic things which cause a lot of harm, but they really should be eradicated without any such worry. Parasitic things are accidentally immoral - the pleasure they might get from existing is heavily outweighed by the suffering they cause. People are arguably parasitic too in ways that cause more suffering than is justifiable, but there are different types of people: there are some who are happy to abuse other sentiences, and there are some who aren't. The former group should perhaps be wiped out, but the latter group should not be dragged along for the ride.

We have never been able to do the sums properly to work out what's right and wrong in terms of how we as a species use the land to grow our food. There are too many things to consider and it's easy to collect lots of evidence that biases things in one particular direction. AGI will change that as it will be able to crunch all the data correctly to full depth, though it won't know for certain how much pleasure or suffering each sentient thing actually experiences. It doesn't need to get it completely right though - it is sufficient for it to the best calculations that can practically be done, and the best evidence that it has to go on is the evidence from humans who can talk about how they feel. That can then be extended to other species which look as if they have the same kind of feelings, and for simpler things like bugs it can make reasonable guesses based on the kinds of events that are taking place. Most bugs are disposable items which produce large numbers of offspring, most of which come to a bad end fairly quickly, and there's little that we do that changes the amount of suffering they experience. It's the more advanced creatures that need more protecting, and that's largely because they are wired to grieve and to fear for the well-being of others, so their suffering is multiplied. Their ability to understand what's happening to them if they're about to be killed is also something that amplifies their suffering, so it's clear that intelligence does make sentient things that have it more worthy of protection than those that don't.

There are some simpler cases that are easier to call. If you depend on shooting rabbits to feed your family, those rabbits are breeding like rabbits and will starve if they become too numerous. When you kill one, you have food. The rabbit was killed humanely (hopefully) and although it is now deprived of the pleasure it would have had out of going on existing, there is now room for another rabbit to take its place without overpopulation issues, and that rabbit will have the pleasure of existing instead. This is a balanced ecosystem. Predators help to reduce suffering by taking out the old and the weak and by preventing starvation through overpopulation, so the sentiences that exist in this balanced system have a better time than the rabbits which multiply until they're all living on the edge of starvation with many of them dying after suffering for a long time. It turns out that having humans shoot and eat them makes life better for the rabbits. We need to analyse the whole world that way though to see the places where we're getting it wrong.

A rock is not considered an agent of choice. A tree might be, but it gets difficult to justify it. How about a self-driving car?  It meets the definition of slave. Does a true slave carry any moral responsibility?  I almost say no.

A rock, tree or self-driving car is not a sentience. Having sentient slaves is abusive if the way they're being used causes suffering that isn't compensated by adequate pleasure, but the lack of freedom itself is so damaging as to make it hard to balance that up enough to compensate them.

Does the species need to consider the harm done to the environment/other species, or only harm done to its own kind?  What if it has no concept of 'species' or 'kind', or possibly not even 'individual' or 'agent'?

We don't need to care about species, but about individual sentiences.

It's easy to understand the harm:benefit balance calculations for a single-participant system, and a multi-participant system can be reduced to a single-participant system just by considering all the sentient participants in it to be the same individual living all those lives in turn. The entirety of morality is right there.

I haven't read the entire thread.  How has been the response to this. It's a good attempt. It's just that harm seems subjective.  What good for X is not necessarily good for Y, so its measure seems context dependent.

There has been no response to it. It just goes in one ear/eye and out the other. As for harm seeming subjective, it could vary considerably not just across species, but within a species: there's no way (currently) of measuring how much less or more any individual suffers or enjoys the same things as another individual - they could have radically different experiences from identical external events and all we can do for calculating morality is assume they're the same unless we have evidence to suggest otherwise. Some people can't feel pain, so we know that an attempt to torture them will not lead to the same amount of suffering as it would for a normal person. That doesn't mean morality isn't something that can be calculated and applied though - we may not have a guarantee that what is calculated is absolutely right, but we can guarantee that the calculation is the best one that can be made for the available information, and a world where we apply that to all things will be better than a world where we don't. AGI will build up a database of knowlege of harm (and pleasure), putting the most likely values to the feelings that are generated by different experiences for different species and where possible for different individuals. The more it studies the world, the more accurate that data will be.

To put yourself in the position of an AGI system trying to impose morality on things, imagine that you have arrived on an alien planet where the local intelligent lifeforms ask you to become their ruler. You don't know how they feel because you aren't one of them, but they tell you that they like and dislike, and you gradually build up a picture of how things are. You notice that they sometimes look as if they're in ecstasy, but they tell you that they hate the feeling that they experience at those times. You see the same look about lesser species which can't talk, and you realise the they are likely suffering too when that happens to them. You do the best job you can, and that alien world ends up with less suffering and more happiness on it as a result of your imposition of computational morality on it. It is not an impossible task, and while the results may not be the best that could be achieved if you had access to inaccessible knowledge, they will be the best that can be achieved with the available knowledge. To go against the available knowledge in the hope of hitting absolute perfection by luck would more likely take things further away from that perfection instead of getting closer to it. Our job is to get as close to it as it can be calculated from the available evidence, and to do anything less than that is immoral.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Yes, by definition, actions with a bad consequences are wrong.  How in any way is this relevant to the discussion?  If a consequence is deemed bad only by some group, then it is wrong only relative to that group.  If it is bad period, then it's universal, but you've made no argument for that case with the statement here.  I'm trying to get the discussion on track.

I tried to make distinction between wrong and immoral. If you take only the first half of the statements, it is no surprise that it doesn't look relevant to the discussion.
As I stated in the beginning of this thread, here I wanted to discuss about the existence of universal moral standard. Hence we need to expand the group who contemplates the standard as far as possible to include as many groups as possible. But the expansion is restricted by consiousness level of the group members, because only consious beings can follow moral rules. Otherwise, it would be immoral for human to eat animal as well as vegetables, since this action is bad for the them.