[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

"Condemned criminal" means it is severe enough. The death sentence has been made.

Sorry for my limitations in English. It's not my native language. The dictionaries have several definitions for the word "condemn". Some says it can mean life imprisonment.

There's a secret involved? I was suggesting this be above board. Not sure who the victim is here, the criminal or the victims of whatever crimes he committed. If the former, he's already got the death penalty and his relatives already know it. Changing the sentence to 'death by disassembly' shouldn't be significantly different from their POV than say death by lethal injection (which renders the organs unusable for transplants).

In the surgeon version of the trolley problem, the secrecy is part of the scenario. Sorry for the mixed up.
I think one reason can be given in the condemned criminal scenario is the fear of future case where innocent persons could be falsely accused for death penalty just to harvest their organs.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There is another solution: You have these 5 people each in need of a different organ from the one healthy person.  So they draw lots and the loser gives his organs to the other 4. That's like one of the 5 trolley victims getting to be the hero by throwing the other 4 off the tracks before the trolley hits and kills him.  Win win, and yet even this isn't done in practice.

In fact, I think it has never been done. But I'm asking why not, since it actually works better than the 'accidental' version they use now.

Sacrificing one to get parts required to save many is routinely done in industry. But it's only done with machines/equipments, not human. Though it's often called cannibalizing.
I have already proposed this option in earlier post in this thread.
Maybe finding many people with compatible organs are not easy in practice. Or the hospitals don't have adequate resources to perform many surgery at once. They also need consent from the patient to be sacrificed, and perhaps also the recipients themselves.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Quote
- The lost of those five lives are not that big deal. Life can still go on as usual.
With that reasoning, murder shouldn't even be illegal.

In the past, it wasn't. Ask the Aztecs who sacrifice humans. Or Europeans collonizing Americas and killing the natives.
It's still happening in conflict zones, where too many people meet limited resource to survive. Some of those killings can even tip the life balance favorably.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

A specialty doctor could just decide to stay home one day to watch TV for once, without informing his hospital employer. As a result, 3 patients die. His hands are not 'dirty with homicide', and people die every day anyway, so there's nothing wrong with his choosing to blow the day off like that.
Sorry, I find this an immoral choice on the doctor's part.

I don't know if all hospitals apply the same rules. But their employees have rights such as annual leaves. The duties to provide adequate resources for their operation include having backup doctors. So don't put so much pressure to the doctors.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

For those who want to explore the arithmetic for morality, consider this statement.

Indeed, are happiness and misery mathematical entities that can be added or subtracted in the first place? Eating ice cream is enjoyable. Finding true love is more enjoyable. Do you think that if you just eat enough ice cream, the accumulated pleasure could ever equal the rapture of true love?

Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari.

[alancalverd]

Eating ice cream is enjoyable. Finding true love is more enjoyable. Do you think that if you just eat enough ice cream, the accumulated pleasure could ever equal the rapture of true love?

Not a universal example, by any means. There are some people who choose to eat to excess (say outside the 3σ region of the normal distribution) and end up with no friends. Some people are socially anhedonic and prefer any amount of ice cream to even a hint of love. Some people (me included) don't much like ice cream.

You can base your moral standard on an arithmetic mean, or some other statistic, but the definition of immorality requires an arbitrary limit on deviation.

Let's go back to deliberate killing. It is apparently OK for a soldier to kill a uniformed opponent at a distance, or even hand-to-hand, but not to execute a wounded opponent. But it is a moral imperative to execute a wounded animal of any other species. Or he could kill a plain-clothes spy, but arbitrarily butchering other civilians is a war crime. Except if said civilians happen to be in the vicinity of a legitimate (or reasonably suspected) bombing target...... Surely, of all the possible human interactions, acts of war should be cut and dried by now? But they aren't.

[syhprum]

The rules of warfare are made but winners it is OK to cunningly plan to set fire to a city like Tokyo or Dresden  burning hundreds of thousands of civilians to death but to execute 50 or so air force personnel that have brocken  out of a prison camp is a heinous war crime that will never be forgotten.
Fear not the rules of warfare will be settled one day we get plenty of practice. 

[alancalverd]

Problem is that the rules of war evolve, as with less lethal forms of combat, in the light of previous conflicts. At the outbreak of WWII no combatant had the capability or intention of obliterating entire cities but the conflict evolved from blitzkrieg and trench warfare (at which the Germans and Japanese were particularly adept) to attrition of supplies, where the geographical separation of American and Russian factories from the front line eventually yielded the advantage to the Allies.

The technology of firestorm and nuclear bombing then changed the primary objective from infantry occupation of foreign territory to demonstrably unlimited aerial destruction of the homeland, but the relevant Geneva Conventions did not protect noncombatant civilians at the time. Problem nowadays is asymmetric warfare, with guerrillas embedded in compliant (if not complicit) civilian populations: Geneva has not caught up with Vietnam.         

[alancalverd]

The "surgeon problem" is an interesting consequence of basing morals (and thence laws) on rights rather than wrongs. One man's right (to life) becomes another man's duty (to keep him alive). This is the fundamental objection to integrating UK law, based on a small number of wrongs, into European law which is based on a large number of rights, and it is worth looking for this distinctive qualitative aspect of any moral or ethical system.

The case was raised earlier of the surgeon who takes a day off, during which several patients die. The "right to life" means that the State has to provide best possible medical cover for all conditions at all times, whether as a national service or by buying treatment for those who can't afford it. This is quite different from a national or private service providing "best available within budget", which avoids individual moral dilemmas by substituting explicit terms of business (e.g. "surgery available Mon-Fri only") for an unlimited duty. Thus it is contractually wrong for the surgeon to take a day off without notice, or for the scalpels to be blunt, but the buck stops there.

Less spectacular, but more of a practical problem, is the EU "right to family life" which has actually prevented the deportation of an undesirable who claimed his cat was his family, and the proposed destination would not accept cats.   

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Moral rules are set to achieve some desired states in reliable manner, i.e. they produce more desired results in the long run.

In the broad and always disconcerting area of Ethics there seem to be two broad categories for identifying what makes acts ‘moral’:

Deontology: Acts are moral (or not) in themselves: it’s just wrong to kill or torture someone under most circumstances, regardless of the consequences. See Kant.

Consequentialism: Acts are moral according to their consequences: killing or torturing someone leads to bad results or sets bad precedents, so (sic) we should not do it.

Then there is Particularism: the idea that there are no clear moral principles as such.

https://charlescrawford.biz/2018/05/17/philosophy-trolley-problem-torture/
Even someone who embrace Deontology recognize that there are exceptions to their judgement toward some actions, as seen in the usage of the word most, instead of all circumstances. It shows that the moral value is not inherently attached to the actions themselves. It still depends on the circumstances instead, and the consequences are part of those.
All objections/criticisms to Consequentialism that I've seen so far get their points by emphasizing short term consequences which are in contrast to their long term overall consequences. If anybody know some counterexamples, please let me know.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Let's go back to deliberate killing. It is apparently OK for a soldier to kill a uniformed opponent at a distance, or even hand-to-hand, but not to execute a wounded opponent.

It may depends on the wound and circumstances. If it's so severe and there is no possibility to save them in time(e.g. hole through the lung), and letting them live only causes them to endure prolonged, meaningless pain, then executing them might be the best option.

But it is a moral imperative to execute a wounded animal of any other species. Or he could kill a plain-clothes spy, but arbitrarily butchering other civilians is a war crime. Except if said civilians happen to be in the vicinity of a legitimate (or reasonably suspected) bombing target...... Surely, of all the possible human interactions, acts of war should be cut and dried by now? But they aren't.

Cooperations are formed by common interests of involving parties. They are more reliable if they have common goals instead of spontaneous interests. They can be permanent with common terminal goals.
When there are discrepancies in terminal goals, they will understandably set different priority lists, which may cause conflicts and dispute. If those conflict of interest can not be negotiated, then war will break out.
So in order to create everlasting peace, we need to convince people about our common terminal goals, and build an adequately accurate and precise model of objective reality so we can act accordingly to achieve those goals in reliable manner.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Eating ice cream is enjoyable. Finding true love is more enjoyable. Do you think that if you just eat enough ice cream, the accumulated pleasure could ever equal the rapture of true love?

Not a universal example, by any means. There are some people who choose to eat to excess (say outside the 3σ region of the normal distribution) and end up with no friends. Some people are socially anhedonic and prefer any amount of ice cream to even a hint of love. Some people (me included) don't much like ice cream.

You can base your moral standard on an arithmetic mean, or some other statistic, but the definition of immorality requires an arbitrary limit on deviation.

The example above was meant as counterexample to classical method of utilitarian morality. Another prominent critic is the utility monster as discussed in my previous posts.
If we have found an ultimate terminal goal for conscious moral agents, we can set moral rules to achieve that goal. We can learn from AI researches to optimize the process of setting those moral rules and avoid making mistakes identified in that field, such as Goodhart's Curse. https://arbital.com/p/goodharts_curse/

Goodhart's Curse and meta-utility functions
An obvious next question is "Why not just define the AI such that the AI itself regards U as an estimate of V, causing the AI's U to more closely align with V as the AI gets a more accurate empirical picture of the world?"

Reply: Of course this is the obvious thing that we'd want to do. But what if we make an error in exactly how we define "treat U as an estimate of V"? Goodhart's Curse will magnify and blow up any error in this definition as well.

We must distinguish:

V, the true value function that is in our hearts.
T, the external target that we formally told the AI to align on, where we are hoping that T really means V.
U, the AI's current estimate of T or probability distribution over possible T.
U will converge toward T as the AI becomes more advanced. The AI's epistemic improvements and learned experience will tend over time to eliminate a subclass of Goodhart's Curse where the current estimate of U-value has diverged upward from T-value, cases where the uncertain U-estimate was selected to be erroneously above the correct formal value T.

However, Goodhart's Curse will still apply to any potential regions where T diverges upward from V, where the formal target diverges from the true value function that is in our hearts. We'd be placing immense pressure toward seeking out what we would retrospectively regard as human errors in defining the meta-rule for determining utilities. 1

Goodhart's Curse and 'moral uncertainty'
"Moral uncertainty" is sometimes offered as a solution source in AI alignment; if the AI has a probability distribution over utility functions, it can be risk-averse about things that might be bad. Would this not be safer than having the AI be very sure about what it ought to do?

Translating this idea into the V-T-U story, we want to give the AI a formal external target T to which the AI does not currently have full access and knowledge. We are then hoping that the AI's uncertainty about T, the AI's estimate of the variance between T and U, will warn the AI away from regions where from our perspective U would be a high-variance estimate of V. In other words, we're hoping that estimated U-T uncertainty correlates well with, and is a good proxy for, actual U-V divergence.

The idea would be that T is something like a supervised learning procedure from labeled examples, and the places where the current U diverges from V are things we 'forgot to tell the AI'; so the AI should notice that in these cases it has little information about T.

Goodhart's Curse would then seek out any flaws or loopholes in this hoped-for correlation between estimated U-T uncertainty and real U-V divergence. Searching a very wide space of options would be liable to select on:

Regions where the AI has made an epistemic error and poorly estimated the variance between U and T;
Regions where the formal target T is solidly estimable to the AI, but from our own perspective the divergence from T to V is high (that is, the U-T uncertainty fails to perfectly cover all T-V divergences).
The second case seems especially likely to occur in future phases where the AI is smarter and has more empirical information, and has correctly reduced its uncertainty about its formal target T. So moral uncertainty and risk aversion may not scale well to superintelligence as a means of warning the AI away from regions where we'd retrospectively judge that U/T and V had diverged.

Other interesting reading around AI problems.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vXzM5L6njDZSf4Ftk/defining-ai-wireheading

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Utilitarian morality suffers a problem stated as Goodhart's Law.

Goodhart's Law is named after the economist Charles Goodhart. A standard formulation is "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Goodhart's original formulation is "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse when pressure is placed upon it for control purposes."

For example, suppose we require banks to have '3% capital reserves' as defined some particular way. 'Capital reserves' measured that particular exact way will rapidly become a much less good indicator of the stability of a bank, as accountants fiddle with balance sheets to make them legally correspond to the highest possible level of 'capital reserves'.

Decades earlier, IBM once paid its programmers per line of code produced. If you pay people per line of code produced, the "total lines of code produced" will have even less correlation with real productivity than it had previously.

And the research below made a breakthrough in deciphering how the body’s cells sense touch, including pain and pleasure.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03955-w?utm_source=twt_nnc&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=naturenews&sf227836567=1

Touch underlies the functioning of almost every tissue and cell type, says Patapoutian. Organisms interpret forces to understand their world, to enjoy a caress and to avoid painful stimuli. In the body, cells sense blood flowing past, air inflating the lungs and the fullness of the stomach or bladder. Hearing is based on cells in the inner ear detecting the force of sound waves.

It shows why morality based on pain and pleasure is susceptible to problems identified as winner's, optimizer's and Goodhart's curses. https://arbital.com/p/goodharts_curse/

[alancalverd]

Decades earlier, IBM once paid its programmers per line of code produced. If you pay people per line of code produced, the "total lines of code produced" will have even less correlation with real productivity than it had previously.

A fine example. Slightly off topic from universal morality, but I've always distinguished between production and management. Production workers should get paid per unit product since they have no other choice or control. The function of management is to optimise, so managers should be paid only from a profit share. The IBM example is interesting since a line of code is not product but a component: if you can achieve the same result with less code, you have a more efficient product: the program or subroutine is the product.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Decades earlier, IBM once paid its programmers per line of code produced. If you pay people per line of code produced, the "total lines of code produced" will have even less correlation with real productivity than it had previously.

A fine example. Slightly off topic from universal morality, but I've always distinguished between production and management. Production workers should get paid per unit product since they have no other choice or control. The function of management is to optimise, so managers should be paid only from a profit share. The IBM example is interesting since a line of code is not product but a component: if you can achieve the same result with less code, you have a more efficient product: the program or subroutine is the product.

This example emphasizes the discrepancy between longterm goal with short term goal. Just like the name suggest, long term goals have measurable results after a long time has passed since the goal setting, hence without other tools, we might not know wether or not they are going to be achieved, or even if we are going to the right direction. That's why we need short term goals, to help us evaluate our actions and see if they are aligned with our long term goals. In process control system, we can use Smith predictor which is a predictive controller designed to control systems with a significant feedback time delay. We must carefully choose the design of the predictor to be as accurate as possible to minimize process fluctuation.
The same logic also applies to moral rules. They are shortcut to help us achieve long term goals as conscious agents. We need to be more transparent of why those rules should be followed, and what circumstances may trigger exceptions. Most cultures suggest that killing, lying, stealing are bad, but they found exceptions for them.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Using artificial intelligence to solve moral problems will inevitably come to a question
What can be the differences between intelligence and consciousness?

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-consciousness-and-intelligence

Glyn Williams, Answered Aug 11, 2014

I personally define intelligence as the ability to solve problems.

And while we often attempt to solve problems using conscious methods. (Visualize a problem, visualize potential solutions etc)  - it is clear from nature that problems can be solved without intent of any sort.

Evolutionary biology has solved the problem of flight at least 4 times. Without a single conscious-style thought in its non-head.

Chess playing computers can solve chess problems, by iterating though all possible moves.  Again without a sense of self.

Consciousness as it is usually defined, is type of intelligence that is associated with the problems of agency.  If you are a being and have to do stuff - then that might be called awareness or consciousness.

It's also worth noting that being conscious doesn't necessarily having high intelligence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#Historical_IQ_classification_tables

IQ Range ("ratio IQ")   IQ Classification
175 and over   Precocious
150–174   Very superior
125–149   Superior
115–124   Very bright
105–114   Bright
95–104   Average
85–94   Dull
75–84   Borderline
50–74   Morons
25–49   Imbeciles
0–24   Idiots

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Moral rules are set to achieve some desired states in reliable manner, i.e. they produce more desired results in the long run.

In the broad and always disconcerting area of Ethics there seem to be two broad categories for identifying what makes acts ‘moral’:

Deontology: Acts are moral (or not) in themselves: it’s just wrong to kill or torture someone under most circumstances, regardless of the consequences. See Kant.

Consequentialism: Acts are moral according to their consequences: killing or torturing someone leads to bad results or sets bad precedents, so (sic) we should not do it.

Then there is Particularism: the idea that there are no clear moral principles as such.

https://charlescrawford.biz/2018/05/17/philosophy-trolley-problem-torture/
Even someone who embrace Deontology recognize that there are exceptions to their judgement toward some actions, as seen in the usage of the word most, instead of all circumstances. It shows that the moral value is not inherently attached to the actions themselves. It still depends on the circumstances instead, and the consequences are part of those.
All objections/criticisms to Consequentialism that I've seen so far get their points by emphasizing short term consequences which are in contrast to their long term overall consequences. If anybody know some counterexamples, please let me know.

Here is another objection to deontological morality. There are circumstances where following one moral rule will inevitably violating other moral rules. Which rules must we keep following then, which can be abandoned? How to set priority for those rules? Is the priority fixed, or might it still depend on the circumstances?

In modern times, slavery has been classified as one of the most immoral acts. But this wasn't the case for majority of human history. It wasn't even in the list of ten commandments, which still have many adherents. But this is understandable since at that time, worse actions such as genocide were considered normal and had been done repeatedly by prominent moral authorities such as prophets, which presumably had higher moral standards than their peers.

[alancalverd]

prominent moral authorities such as prophets, which presumably had higher moral standards than their peers.

Illegitimate presumption! Priests, politicians, philosophers, prophets, and perverts in general, all profess to have higher moral standards than the rest of us, but so did Hitler and Trump. "By their deeds shall ye know them" (Matthew 7:16) is probably the least questionable line in the entire Bible.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

prominent moral authorities such as prophets, which presumably had higher moral standards than their peers.

Illegitimate presumption! Priests, politicians, philosophers, prophets, and perverts in general, all profess to have higher moral standards than the rest of us, but so did Hitler and Trump.

presumption
/prɪˈzʌm(p)ʃ(ə)n/
noun
1.
an idea that is taken to be true on the basis of probability.
"underlying presumptions about human nature"

That definition seems to be using Bayesian inference, hence there is still a chance that it turns out to be false.
I was talking about moral authority instead of formal authority, which you seem to use as counter examples.
I think that we can safely presume that many of their peers have lower moral standard. While they might not be the majority, but collective actions of a group are often depends on its most vocal members.

"By their deeds shall ye know them" (Matthew 7:16) is probably the least questionable line in the entire Bible.

Agreed.

[alancalverd]

I think that we can safely presume that many of their peers have lower moral standard.

Lower than Hitler and Trump? Really?

Priests, politicians, and other parasites, assert their moral authority. "Proof by assertion" is not valid.