[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There is no and cannot be, if we are not captured by AI and impose its power and one moral code on all. Everything is relative.

Your statement implies that it can be, if we are captured by AI.

Dou you agree with moral relativism? Should we let Nazis and ISIS practice their moral rules?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I've read many comments in various forums, also social media like facebook, twitter, and youtube defending moral relativism. If you're one of them, please consider its implications as shown below.

My point is that without a universal terminal goal, there is no universal moral standard, and we can't say if a moral rule is universally good or bad.

And there being no possibility of a UTG, there is no UMS.

How do you proof that there is no possibility of universal terminal goal?
Without universal moral standard, we can't say if any moral rule is better or worse than any other moral rules. You can't say that ancient Jewish moral rules are better or worst than Nazi's moral rules, nor with modern secular democratic moral rules.
Every action would be equally justified by their own moral standard. Jewish' genocide would be justified by their tribal moral standard. Nazi's holocaust would be justified by their racist/facist moral standard. ISIS' actions would be justified by their theological moral standard. Even Ted Bundy's serial rapes and murders would be justified by hedonistic moral standard. Charles Whitman's mass shooting would be justified by nihilistic moral standard. They are equally good by relativistic moral standard.
You can only say that your moral standard is better than the others by showing that yours is more aligned with the universal moral standard, at least in some specific aspects.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Recently I've selected the best answer in this thread. It might make me look narcissistic. But I think it is necessary to prevent this thread from being repetitive by someone answering the question in the title without reading the course of discussion from the start, which I realize is almost impossible for new members, considering the length of this thread.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Is It Our Moral Duty to Explore Other Planets? - with Christopher Mason

Inevitably, life on Earth will come to an end, whether by climate disaster, cataclysmic war, or the death of the sun in a few billion years. What do we do about it?
Watch the Q&A:

Get Christopher's Book: https://geni.us/fELYS

In this talk, Christopher E Mason argues we have a moral duty to explore other planets and solar systems. He envisages the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets can be applied to redesigning biology so that we can sustainably inhabit those planets. And he will lay out a 500-year plan for undertaking the massively ambitious project of reengineering human genetics for life on other worlds.

Christopher E. Mason is a geneticist and computational biologist who has been a Principal Investigator and Co-investigator of several NASA missions and Planetary Protection projects. He is Associate Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, with affiliate appointments at the Meyer Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School, and the Consortium for Space Genetics at Harvard Medical School. His book The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach Other Worlds will be published in April 2021 by MIT Press.

This talk was recorded on 20th April 2021

[alancalverd]

we have a moral duty to explore other planets and solar systems. He envisages the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets.....

That's arrogance, not evidence of a moral duty. Having screwed up a perfectly habitable planet, killed off most of the other species on it, and invented politics and religion as excuses for killing each other, it would be best for the earth and the rest of the universe if homo sapiens was eliminated, not encouraged to infect other planets..

[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey]

You know, Hamdani Yusuf clearly put so much time and effort into asking this deep, meaningful philosophical question, and yet has ONLY received 2,034 replies. It's a shame and an outrage. A shamage.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

we have a moral duty to explore other planets and solar systems. He envisages the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets.....

That's arrogance, not evidence of a moral duty. Having screwed up a perfectly habitable planet, killed off most of the other species on it, and invented politics and religion as excuses for killing each other, it would be best for the earth and the rest of the universe if homo sapiens was eliminated, not encouraged to infect other planets..

It looks like you're a misanthropist.

This video introduces some of the recent philosophical work on misanthropy. The third part is based on the work of Ian James Kidd, particularly his article "Varieties of Philosophical Misanthropy". See also Norlock's "Perpetual Struggle" and Halwani's "Misanthropy and Virtue". The notion of secular theodicies comes from Benatar's book "The Human Predicament", though his focus is on pessimism in general rather than misanthropy specifically.


0:00 - Philosophical misanthropy
3:24 - Secular theodicies
23:50 - Living with misanthropy

[alancalverd]

It looks like you're a misanthropist.

You paint me with too broad a brush! I'm not anti-human, just pro-universe.

I love and appreciate a few of my fellow beings who really do good things for others and various bits of the planet, but the fact is that all living things convert their environment to toxins: excretion is one of the defining characteristics of life.

Humans produce a wider range of toxins and in vastly greater quantities per capita than any other species, so even when we are not torturing and killing each other in the name of some absurd hypothesis, we cover the planet in crap.

Several excellent products are labelled "not for export". I think homo sapiens is a potentially excellent product, but should not be exported from this planet.   

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

I love and appreciate a few of my fellow beings who really do good things for others and various bits of the planet, but the fact is that all living things convert their environment to toxins: excretion is one of the defining characteristics of life.

Have you seen a terrarium that have been running for decades supporting lives isolated from outside world?
In principle, there's nothing to prevent humans from building suitable size terrarium for humans.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Several excellent products are labelled "not for export". I think homo sapiens is a potentially excellent product, but should not be exported from this planet.   

No one I know claims that humans in current form are perfect. But we can use our knowledge and wisdom to make continuous improvement.

Physically, human body is not suitable for outer space, nor most extraterrestrial worlds. But there's no requirement for us to go there naked.

Do you have a reason to prevent humans from building a multiplanetary society?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Currently, autonomous robots are exploring extraterrestrial worlds, like moon, Mars, and asteroids. They are extending consciousness to larger space. But currently, they have an obvious limitation to play the leading role in the effort to achieve the universal terminal goal. They can't reproduce, yet. Their continued existence still depends on humans.

[alancalverd]

Have you seen a terrarium that have been running for decades supporting lives isolated from outside world?
In principle, there's nothing to prevent humans from building suitable size terrarium for humans.

We already live in a very good one. Better to keep it tidy than to bugger it up and build another one where it isn't wanted.

[alancalverd]

No one I know claims that humans in current form are perfect. But we can use our knowledge and wisdom to make continuous improvement.

Physically, human body is not suitable for outer space, nor most extraterrestrial worlds. But there's no requirement for us to go there naked.

Then you would be exporting something that isn't a human. And as it is arguable that environmental stress (including radiation damage) leads to evolution, you would be exporting something too robust to evolve.

[alancalverd]

in the effort to achieve the universal terminal goal.

defined by whom?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Then you would be exporting something that isn't a human. And as it is arguable that environmental stress (including radiation damage) leads to evolution, you would be exporting something too robust to evolve.

As long as they are not perfect, there's always some room for improvement. Especially when they have access to redesign their own body.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Have you seen a terrarium that have been running for decades supporting lives isolated from outside world?
In principle, there's nothing to prevent humans from building suitable size terrarium for humans.

We already live in a very good one. Better to keep it tidy than to bugger it up and build another one where it isn't wanted.

As long as it's not perfect, there's always some room for improvement. Especially when we have access to redesign our own environment.
How long do you think it will stay as good as it is? Should we all just die and extinct with it?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

in the effort to achieve the universal terminal goal.

defined by whom?

By any conscious beings who survived long enough to consider all logically possible alternatives.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

in the effort to achieve the universal terminal goal.

defined by whom?

By any conscious beings who survived long enough to consider all logically possible alternatives.

And here's my opinion about consciousness. Even I have a problem recalling what I've written here previously.

Vision alone only covers input part of a conscious system. It still requires other parts like self awareness, preference or feedback mechanism, and output or actuating system to change its environment. However, it's possible to build a conscious system where its input from environment is exclusively visual.

It looks like those subsystems of conscious entities contribute to overall consciousness, while their effectiveness can be independent from each others. In this case, overall consciousness can be represented as the result of matrix multiplication of the subsystem's effectiveness to achieve their respective goals.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

This video is about AI safety. But it's analogous to morality, which is historically about Natural Intelligence safety, especially within human species. Both of them concern about goal alignment.

[alancalverd]

To summarise AI safety:

If you don't control or constrain a machine or an animal, it may do things you don't like.

Or, in the case of my dog, nothing.