[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

How I Made an Ant Think It Was Dead?The Zombie Ant Experiment

In this video I show you how I made an ant think it was dead by putting a specific chemical on it that ants use to signal when they have died. This is how ants know to put the ants that have passed away into the ant graveyard.

Ant's behavior is largely determined by chemical signalling. It's like rules of thumbs. It's simple and easy to follow, works well in many ordinary situations, but sometimes it can misfire, or deliberately misled by someone else who understand that.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Where environmentalists get it wrong (ALL OPINION)

The environmental movement has helped shape awareness and change in some hugely important issues, from food contamination to lead poisoning to climate change. But sometimes passion and energy override pragmatism and common sense. Here are a couple of examples, and appeal to follow the science, not the heart.

This video is OPINION. Since so many people misunderstand the difference, an opinion should be based on facts, but it is not itself a fact. You can disagree with an opinion (and please feel free to do so) but you cannot claim that an opinion in right or wrong, correct or incorrect. You cannot overturn a fact with persuasive arguments, but you can overturn an opinion with persuasive arguments -- so I look forward to that.

Rule based morality are essentially a collection of rules of thumbs. There will be occasions when breaking them give more preferred results instead.

[alancalverd]

Good video!

[alancalverd]

Ant's behavior is largely determined by chemical signalling. It's like rules of thumbs. It's simple and easy to follow, works well in many ordinary situations, but sometimes it can misfire, or deliberately misled by someone else who understand that.

Quite a few humans have been buried alive by mistake. Many more have been buried alive deliberately. Which makes humans morally worse than ants.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Ant's behavior is largely determined by chemical signalling. It's like rules of thumbs. It's simple and easy to follow, works well in many ordinary situations, but sometimes it can misfire, or deliberately misled by someone else who understand that.

Quite a few humans have been buried alive by mistake. Many more have been buried alive deliberately. Which makes humans morally worse than ants.

Having bigger and more complex neural networks to simulate their environment gives humans more capability to achieve their goals, compared to other species. Implementation of this capability can bring good or bad impacts, depending on the goal alignment. Like a vector, the capability determines the magnitude, while the goal alignment determines the direction.

Evaluation of morality is often easier to make in hindsight, when all relevant consequences can be determined. Sometimes, what's thought to be morally good in a period of time will be found out as morally bad instead later on. And usually, the later evaluations are considered more valid.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

When the goal is already well understood, the problem of good and evil can be translated into problem of wisdom and ignorant.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Understanding morality is about understanding decision making process. It won't be complete without understanding of collective intelligence.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Evaluation of morality is often easier to make in hindsight, when all relevant consequences can be determined. Sometimes, what's thought to be morally good in a period of time will be found out as morally bad instead later on. And usually, the later evaluations are considered more valid.

Bringing bad consequences doesn't necessarily mean a decision is morally bad. It depends on the available alternatives. Bombing a city full of civilians might be taken as an example. Abortion is another example.
A decision is said to be morally bad if there is a clearly better alternative which was deliberately avoided. The disputes often come from the determination of the phrase clearly better. It depends on the assumptions of those who is evaluating the decision.

[alancalverd]

In short, "history is written by the winners", which replaces reams of inconsequential philosophy with a few words of the bloody obvious. That's science.

The problem is that the value of morality and ethics is to evaluate the desirability of an action a priori.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Don't forget that history can be rewritten by future winners. But in order to do that, they must survive first.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The problem is that the value of morality and ethics is to evaluate the desirability of an action a priori.

That's called deontology. You should be aware that other types of morality exist, such as consequentialism and virtue ethics.

[alancalverd]

Post-hoc ethics is just intellectual parasitism. Ask the soldiers who were spared the amphibious invasion of Japan by dropping atomic bombs. In the words of Enola Gay's navigator Dutch VanKerk "We were at war, for chrissake."

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

https://providencemag.com/2019/08/the-problem-of-post-hoc-ethics/
This is the first link I get by googling post-hoc-ethics. It talks about the ethical use of nuclear weapon.

We can't claim that an action is immoral unless we can demonstrate a clearly better alternative known by the actor.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

"Wasting resources" is a value judgement with no logical evidence. Every living thing consumes part of its environment and excretes toxins. You might as well accuse trees of "wasting" carbon dioxide and poisoning the environment with oxygen - which is exactly what happened before animals evolved to complete the cycle.

Waste or not depends on the judgment of conscious entities. If some resources are lost or destroyed without giving expected results, then at least some of those resources have been wasted. Lean management system identifies and classifies those wastes, so we can manage them to increase effectiveness and efficiency of our systems.
If evolutionary process on earth lasting for billions of years cannot produce conscious entities capable of building a multiplanetary civilization, then sooner or later the process will be reset, and whatever had been done would be wasted.

Wastes can be disposed, or be recycled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_rebreather

Disposal of wastes are essentially externalize the recycling process. But when the quantity of the waste exceeds the capacity of the environment to recycle it, then the unwanted effects of the waste will come back.

[alancalverd]

It talks about the ethical use of nuclear weapon.

History and ethics are determined by the winner.

The winner in an asymmetric nuclear war is the side that strikes the first blow, so its use is post-hoc ethical.

The winner in a symmetric nuclear war is the nation that stays out of it. Ditto.

However the current ethical problem is that the world is run by and for the benefit of non-nations who cannot be beaten with nukes.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The winner in an asymmetric nuclear war is the side that strikes the first blow, so its use is post-hoc ethical.

It's unlikely that a large nation like US, and even less likely for an alliance like NATO to be defeated by a single nuclear attack. They will be able to retaliate.

[alancalverd]

Asymmetry works the other way in a nuclear war, just like last time.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The problem is that the value of morality and ethics is to evaluate the desirability of an action a priori.

That's called deontology. You should be aware that other types of morality exist, such as consequentialism and virtue ethics.

Deontology can be derived as a combination of consequentialism and probability. They can be used to obtain practical rules which can deliver most of desired outcomes. Golden rules and rule of honesty are some examples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the "vital few").[1] Other names for this principle are the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity.

Edge cases would require more refined rules. The balance would depend on cost of computations and risk of consequences to the system for adopting wrong rules.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Edge cases would require more refined rules. The balance would depend on cost of computations and risk of consequences to the system for adopting wrong rules.

Virtue ethics is essentially similar to deontology, which introduced shortcuts to get mostly correct decisions. But instead of communicable rules, the shortcuts here are more internally built into the bodies of the moral agents, namely instincts, emotions, intuitions, feelings. Aristotle thought that people with good virtue are those whose intrinsic characters can drive them to make moral decisions mostly aligned with the goal of the society in general. The advantage is that they can make good moral decisions quickly and efficiently, although there will be still some edge cases where they fail.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Deontology can be derived as a combination of consequentialism and probability.

Even consequentialism morality must also consider probability in practice. It's simply because we don't have infinite computational capabilities to predict all possible outcomes, especially for more distant future.