[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

About which you know nothing - even the concept is meaningless.

Just read English dictionary. You will find its meaning.

[alancalverd]

The universe contains a lot of stuff that is not known for being "aware", which seems to be the essence of consciousness. Ergo I cannot ascribe a meaning to universal consciousness.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The universe contains a lot of stuff that is not known for being "aware", which seems to be the essence of consciousness. Ergo I cannot ascribe a meaning to universal consciousness.

Not yet.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Ability to feel empathy requires a conscious agent to model a situation from the perspective of other agents with similar characteristics to itself. For some complex organisms, it is an innate ability. Most simple organisms doesn't have it.

Most organisms don't have the ability to model surrounding situations from the perspective of other conscious entities significantly different than themselves. It takes computational resources which might cost too much  for surviving in the wild. So it's understandable that it doesn't develop naturally.

An individual human trying to see from the perspective of universal civilization is like an ant trying to see its environment from the perspective of ant colony, or a human cell trying to see its environment from the perspective of human individuals. Human cells that become overly selfish that they consume more resources than their contribution to the well being of the human individual are called cancer. If this cancerous behavior were done by  human individuals toward their society, we call them immoral.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The goal of moral rules with predetermined reward and punishment system is to tip the balance of reward function in the conscious agents algorithms so that they would still positively contribute to the system as a whole even if they act selfishly.

[charles1948]

The goal of moral rules with predetermined reward and punishment system is to tip the balance of reward function in the conscious agents algorithms so that they would still positively contribute to the system as a whole even if they act selfishly.

That doesn't sound very "moral".  You seem to be suggesting this:

1. Reward people,  if they do what "the system" wants
2. Punish people,  if they don't do what "the system" wants.

This leads to the obvious question : who, or what, is "the system"?
 
To which, there seem to be only two answers, according to your theory:

1. The system is ruled by Darwinian Natural Selection, which is ruthless and has no morals
2. The system is ruled by a human Dictator, who is ruthless and has no morals

Both of these answers don't seem very nice. So perhaps your theory is wrong?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

That doesn't sound very "moral".  You seem to be suggesting this:

1. Reward people,  if they do what "the system" wants
2. Punish people,  if they don't do what "the system" wants.

It just means that your currently held moral standard is not universal.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

This leads to the obvious question : who, or what, is "the system"?

The system is the collection of conscious entities that exist in the future.

Whatever happened in the past will become memory for present and future conscious beings. Whatever we are doing now are becoming events in the past.
If our actions have no effect whatsoever to future conscious beings, they will be meaningless. It could happen if we go extinct and the conscious beings exist in the future emerge/evolve independently from our lineage.

Whatever the future conscious beings might be, they are extremely unlikely to appear suddenly out of nowhere in a single shot. It's much more probable that they will emerge as products of evolutionary process through natural selection in many generations. The process will be continued by artificial selection. The variations of their characteristics will shift from mainly provided by random mutation to a more directed intentional changes.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

To which, there seem to be only two answers, according to your theory:

1. The system is ruled by Darwinian Natural Selection, which is ruthless and has no morals
2. The system is ruled by a human Dictator, who is ruthless and has no morals

Both of these answers don't seem very nice. So perhaps your theory is wrong?

Perhaps it means that you need to think harder to find other possible answers.

[charles1948]

Perhaps you should stop asking meaningless questions.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Perhaps you should stop asking meaningless questions.

First, the question is not meaningless. You can find it in dictionaries. Our answer to the question will determine who should live or die, and what kind of life we and our successors would have in the future.

Second, I've already answered the question. You just don't seem to agree with it. If you think that you have better answer, you can try to convince us with your reasonings, and why you couldn't find a better alternative to your currently best answer.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

On Consciousness, Morality, Effective Altruism & Myth with Yuval Noah Harari and Max Tegmark

Neither Yuval Noah Harari nor Max Tegmark need much in the way of introduction. Both are avant-garde thinkers at the forefront of 21st century discourse around science, technology, society and humanity’s future. This conversation represents a rare opportunity for two intellectual leaders to apply their combined expertise — in physics, artificial intelligence, history, philosophy and anthropology — to some of the most profound issues of our time. Max and Yuval bring their own macroscopic perspectives to this discussion of both cosmological and human history, exploring questions of consciousness, ethics, effective altruism, artificial intelligence, human extinction, emerging technologies and the role of myths and stories in fostering societal collaboration and meaning. We hope that you’ll join the Future of Life Institute Podcast for our final conversation of 2019, as we look toward the future and the possibilities it holds for all of us.

Topics discussed include:

-Max and Yuval’s views and intuitions about consciousness
-How they ground and think about morality
-Effective altruism and its cause areas of global health/poverty, animal suffering, and existential risk
-The function of myths and stories in human society
-How emerging science, technology, and global paradigms challenge the foundations of many of our stories
-Technological risks of the 21st century

You can find the page and transcript for this podcast here: https://futureoflife.org/2019/12/31/o...​

Timestamps:

0:00​ Intro
3:14​ Grounding morality and the need for a science of consciousness
11:45​ The effective altruism community and it's main cause areas
13:05​ Global health
14:44​ Animal suffering and factory farming
17:38​ Existential risk and the ethics of the long-term future
23:07​ Nuclear war as a neglected global risk
24:45​ On the risks of near-term AI and of artificial general intelligence and superintelligence
28:37​ On creating new stories for the challenges of the 21st century
32:33​ The risks of big data and AI enabled human hacking and monitoring
47:40​ What does it mean to be human and what should we want to want?
52:29​ On positive global visions for the future
59:29​ Goodbyes and appreciations
01:00:20​ Outro and supporting the Future of Life Institute Podcast

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Many people, including Harari, seem to confuse between feeling and consciousness. It makes them cling to feeling based morality.
Taken for granted, feeling or intuition based decisions are better than randomly picked decisions. But we could do even better with thoughtful decisions, especially for long term consequences.

Feelings and emotions also provide feedback mechanism for the neural networks. They become internal leading indicators so the system know whether it is going to the right direction.
Simple organisms with no internal feedback mechanism must rely on external feedbacks to evaluate their actions. Their survival from an event is their positive feedback, while their death is their negative feedback. It's extremely hard to learn when your own death is your only negative feedback. In artificial neural networks, the learning process is done by adjusting weight of neural connections through back propagation. No learning is possible when the whole network is destroyed.

IMO, having feelings and emotions are just instrumental goals for survival. No working formal moral system is based on feelings. People can have different emotional sensitivity towards a particular case, even between twins.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Some people may feel joy and pleasure while riding a rollercoaster, while some others may feel fear or even pain. Formal moral system can't be based on aggregate of feeling either. In some societies, majority of people get their feelings hurt more by cartoon drawings rather than mass killings.

[alancalverd]

In some societies, majority of people get their feelings hurt more by cartoon drawings rather than mass killings.

I doubt it. It is clear that various old perverts teach their flock to hate anyone who says that a drawing represents the Prophet, but that clearly isn't a genuine personal insult because nobody knows what he looked like anyway (assuming that he actually practised what he is said to have preached).

Just one more example of why religion is evil.  It provides an excuse to do things that a rational man would consider immoral.

And whilst I'm on my high horse,  can you think of a sentence in which deleting the fashionable word "existential",  alters its meaning?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

In some societies, majority of people get their feelings hurt more by cartoon drawings rather than mass killings.

I doubt it. It is clear that various old perverts teach their flock to hate anyone who says that a drawing represents the Prophet, but that clearly isn't a genuine personal insult because nobody knows what he looked like anyway (assuming that he actually practised what he is said to have preached).

Feel free to have a doubt. That was just how they expressed it in some interviews during their protests and demonstrations. It's possible that there is a bias for loudest crowds to catch wider news coverage.

[alancalverd]

I am quite sure that those who claimed to have been insulted were all Muslims and therefore had been indocrtrinated by the disgusting perverts who peddle hatred in the name of brotherhood. No sane man gets upset by the suggestion that a drawing represents someone they don't know who died 1500 years ago, unless he has been taught to respond thus.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

WOTM: Moral Duties & Obligations

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I am quite sure that those who claimed to have been insulted were all Muslims and therefore had been indocrtrinated by the disgusting perverts who peddle hatred in the name of brotherhood. No sane man gets upset by the suggestion that a drawing represents someone they don't know who died 1500 years ago, unless he has been taught to respond thus.

Nevertheless, their feelings can be real and sincere, whether or not their beliefs are true.
Someone who indoctrinated them are likely have been victims of indoctrination themselves by someone else.
By the example above, I just wanted to point out that feeling and emotion are not reliable/consistent enough to become basis of morality.

IMO, having feelings and emotions are just instrumental goals for survival. No working formal moral system is based on feelings. People can have different emotional sensitivity towards a particular case, even between twins.

[alancalverd]

Nevertheless, their feelings can be real and sincere,

As were those of the Nazis, Stalinists, Thatcherites, supporters of Idi Amin.... Sincerity does not confer moral authority.